Canadian writer Margaret Atwood appeared to cryptically urge women to cast a vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election with a repost on Friday on X of a Handmaid’s Tale-themed U.S. presidential cartoon.
The cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows women entering a U.S. polling booth dressed in the red dresses and clocks and white bonnets worn by the enslaved women forced to bear children in Atwood’s dystopian 1985 novel.
As they come out the other side, having voted, the cloaks are flung off and they are wearing modern-day clothing.
Atwood, saw her profile and that The Handmaid’s Tale rise during Donald Trump’s first term in office after its adaptation by Hulu captured the zeitgeist of a rising anti-abortion movement in the U.S., which was bolstered by the rolling back in 2022 of Roe Vs Wade, which overturned federal abortion rights.