I keep seeing such comments on my notes which makes me wonder: what did I miss?
"The Handmaid's Tale" draws on global histories.
Atwood was inspired by what happened:
during the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979),
in Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos,
in Germany (The Lebensborn project),
in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu,
in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge,
in Stalinist Russia.
She was also inspired by what happened to Argentinean women during Jorge Rafael Videla's military dictatorship which was backed by the US.
But killing the pregnant women was a crime that even Argentina’s military men – who referred to themselves in self-aggrandising speeches as defenders of “western and Christian civilisation” – couldn’t bring themselves to commit. Instead, they kept pregnant activists alive until they gave birth, murdering them afterwards and handing their babies to childless military couples to raise as their own. It was, in a macabre sense, the military’s ultimate victory against a despised enemy they had decided to annihilate completely. It is estimated some 500 children were born under these circumstances.
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And what happened to Spanish women under Franco.
Known as the lost children of the Franco-era, as many as 300,000 babies are estimated to have been abducted from their mothers under General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from 1939-75, and in the decades after.
The theft of newborns began in the 1930’s after the Spanish Civil War as an ideological practice, stripping left-wing parents or Franco-opponents of their children as a way of ridding Marxist influence from society. But in the 1950’s, the practice expanded to poor or illegitimate families who were seen as economically or morally deficient, Agence France-Presse reports.
New mothers were often told their babies had died and the hospital had taken care of the burials. These babies were allegedly sold for adoption and involved a wide network of doctors, nurses, nuns and priests, according to AFP. The system carried on after Franco’s death in 1975 until 1987, when a new law was implemented regulating adoption.
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"When I wrote 'The Handmaid's Tale', nothing went into it that had not happened in real life somewhere at some time," she said.
