If you thought Aunt Lydia’s terrifying zealotry in The Handmaid’s Tale was confined to the dystopian realm of fiction, think again.
With her holier-than-thou attitude and sadistic tendencies, Aunt Lydia embodies the worst of a society that seeks to control women’s bodies and minds. But you know what? I think I’ve found her long-lost sister, and her name is Katie Britt (R-AL).
Fresh off her unhinged, borderline psychotic performance in response to President Biden’s State of the Union address, Senator Katie Britt has decided to terrorize us with an encore that no one asked for. Yes, spending 17 minutes being terrifyingly cringey from the depths of her kitchen dungeon wasn’t enough for Alabama’s own Aunt Lidya.
Now she’s back with a vengeance, and no, she’s not suggesting we all don red cloaks and white bonnets (though I wouldn’t put it past her). This time she’s channeling her inner Gilead values to promote her newly proposed bill that would create a federal website to collect data on pregnant people. Because what the world needs right now is another creepy, Big Brother-esque government initiative that infringes on the reproductive rights of its citizens.
But hey, let’s give credit where credit is due. Senator Britt has clearly tried her best with the video…much like last time. It’s clear that someone held a gun to her head and forced her to practice her smile in front of a mirror 100 times before hitting record.
The result? A terrifying, uncanny valley grin that’s about as authentic as her alleged concern for women’s well-being.
As if the idea of a national pregnancy registry wasn’t dystopian enough, Britt’s bill, laughably named the “Moms Act” (gag me with a spoon), would also refer pregnant women to “crisis pregnancy centers.” These so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” are nothing more than a real-life manifestation of the Red Centers from The Handmaid’s Tale. It will only be like being trapped in a room with a bunch of Aunts who won’t stop screaming “BLESSED BE THE FRUIT!” and “UNDER HIS EYE!” until you’re so disoriented and broken that you start to believe that maybe, just maybe, letting a bunch of old white dudes and Aunt Lidyas control your reproductive system is the way to go.
Make no mistake, the GOP wants to create a society where women are reduced to nothing more than walking wombs. And what better way to achieve this goal than by establishing a nationwide network of “pregnancy centers” that operate as propaganda mills, feeding vulnerable women a steady diet of lies, shame, and fear until they’re too broken to resist?
Of course, this all comes in the wake of a nationwide surge in Republican-backed anti-choice legislation that has left women and their doctors scrambling to navigate an increasingly hostile landscape. I guess the party of “small government” only applies when it comes to regulating guns and corporations.
The most infuriating thing about the GOP’s anti-woman agenda is the way they try to frame it as “protecting” women. Because nothing says “we care about women” like defunding Planned Parenthood, opposing paid family leave, and gutting protections against domestic violence.
But every cloud, even a horrifying and blandish cloud like Britt, can have a silver lining – the Senator’s new video, that can qualify as It 3 all on its own, is her practically demanding Scarlett Johansson to return to Saturday Night Live and deliver yet another scathing, hilarious roast of Britt’s fresh video rant and copying that creepy smile to the T.
Of course, it’s not like we needed SNL to tell us that Britt is basically a real-life Aunt Lydia. The Republican Party’s war on women is already brought to you by a rogues’ gallery of other Gilead wannabes and fascist Barbies. We have Lauren “I grope people during musicals” Boebert and even people like Kristi “puppy slayer” Noem in the roster. And of course, we can’t forget about Marjorie “Jewish space laser” Taylor Greene, who makes Katie Britt look like a paragon of sanity by comparison.