Is the U.S. on the Road to Gilead? A Warning from Fiction That Feels Too Real

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When The Handmaid’s Tale first aired on TV, many of us watched it as dystopian fiction—dark, dramatic, and distant from our reality. A theocratic regime rising in what was once the United States? Women stripped of all rights? Surely that was pure speculation.

But fiction, especially speculative fiction, has a way of holding up a mirror.

The story of Gilead doesn’t begin with war or chaos. It begins with fear. Fear of infertility, fear of societal collapse, fear that the old ways no longer work. And into that fear steps a movement—a polite, organized, bureaucratic force—that promises order, morality, and safety.

Old newspaper headlines are being burned in a bin. “Newspaper headlines about women’s rights being destroyed.”

People go along with it at first. Some even welcome it. Change comes quietly, through laws, policies, and justifications wrapped in religious language. Rights are rolled back not in a day, but in increments. A bank account frozen here. A protest crushed there. Until one day, the country is no longer what it once was—and resistance becomes dangerous.

And that’s the part that feels uncomfortably familiar.

Right now in the United States, we are seeing:

The erosion of reproductive rights, with some states criminalizing aspects of pregnancy itself.
- As of March 2024, there were no clinics providing abortion care in the 14 states with total abortion bans in effect at that time.
  - Source: Guttmacher Institute
A rise in religious nationalism, where lawmakers invoke faith not just as personal guidance but as a foundation for policy.
- Fewer Americans subscribe to the ideology, but it’s growing in influence among Republicans, including rank-and-file and in public office.
  - Source: The Washington Post
Bans on books, especially those dealing with race, gender, and sexuality.
- PEN America recorded 10,046 instances of book bans in the 2023-2024 school year.
  - Source: PEN America
Surveillance and intimidation targeting educators, healthcare providers, and even librarians.
- The ACLU is tracking 569 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. in 2025.
  - Source: ACLU
A political climate where fear is weaponized—fear of the “other,” of “disorder,” of “decline.”

“Protesters holding signs defending reproductive and intellectual freedom.”

None of this is Gilead. But all of it is how Gilead starts.

And that’s what makes The Handmaid’s Tale such a powerful warning: it doesn’t depict a sudden fall, but a slow fade. A democracy that dies in pieces, while people try to keep living their lives, hoping it will all blow over.

We shouldn’t overstate the comparison—but we shouldn’t ignore the resonance either. The point isn’t that we are already there. The point is that we don’t have to be.