Women dressed as handmaids lined the halls outside the Senate hearing room for
President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Tuesday morning.
The protesters’ costumes are a reference to the popular Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name. The series takes place in a dystopian society in which women have no rights, and are sexually and politically subservient to the men who make the laws.
The protesters were with Demand Justice, a liberal advocacy group, who said in a statement provided to The Hill that they were there to call attention to Kavanaugh’s “anti-abortion, anti-healthcare and anti-women” views. “Brett Kavanaugh is an extremist ideologue who, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, will take away women’s basic rights,” the group’s statement read.
Kavanaugh has been noted for his anti-abortion views, including a dissenting opinion he wrote last year as a D.C. circuit judge, in which he argued that an undocumented 17-year-old girl detained by ICE should be denied immediate access to an abortion clinic.
Demand Justice added in their statement, “Brett Kavanaugh will take this already harsh reality and make it worse.”