'Handmaid's Tale' protest calls out Texas' attempts to roll back reproductive rights

A dystopian novel that has seen newfound attention since Trump's election came to life this week at a Texas protest over legislation limiting reproductive rights.

A group of women dressed as the women from Margaret Atwood's 1984 novel The Handmaid's Tale showed up in Austin, Texas, for Monday's vote on a bill that would ban an abortion procedure used in the second trimester.

Dressed in the robes and bonnets described in the book (and seen in movie adaptions and soon-to-be-released Hulu series), the women filed into the senate chamber with signs depicting the ongoing rollback of reproductive rights and silently made their statement.

The small group of women was part of an effort to challenge anti-abortion bills going through the Texas legislature, including the proposed abortion procedure ban which passed through the Texas Senate 21-9, and a "wrongful birth" bill that would keep parents from suing doctors if their child is born with disabilities and, critics argue, would allow doctors to withhold vital information about the child's health.

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Also in Texas earlier this month, similarly dressed characters were roaming the streets, but that creepy stunt was to promote the new TV series, not fight back against legislation directed at women's bodies.

Here was the scene at the state capital before some of the women were escorted out.

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"It is long past time for anti-choice legislators to stop playing politics with our reproductive health, passing measures that put patients’ health and safety at risk and grossly intrude on the doctor-patient relationship," NARAL said in a statement.

The Handmaid's Tale, depicting a future where women are forced into a kind of reproductive slavery, has seen a resurgence in popularity since Donald Trump's presidency. So have other dystopian reads like 1984, which is just so reassuring.