The mandate of birth. Bioethical and biopolitical issues regarding the TV series The handmaid’s tale

Abstract

This article aims to address bioethical and biopolitical issues that arise from the analysis of the TV series The Handmaid’s Tale (2017), that clearly shows the distinctive characteristics of the patriarchal system regarding the concept of femininity: the social mandate of maternity. Given that films haven’t taken a stand in gender matters, this kind of fiction opens a new outlook in which discussing about these topics is important, as it provides a different way of looking through bioethical narrative. This material allows us to analyze the gestation process from singular aspects of the plot: according to the policy of the current totalitarian regime, fertile women must become surrogate mothers. We emphazise the paradox of the term “surrogate mother”, taking into account that the handmaids aren’t considered the mothers of the children they give birth to, and they are not expected to take care of them as they grow up. The analysis of situational singularities that can be extracted from this story enables us to focus on this particular case, without trying to generalize, and consider the complexity of this issue.

Keywords

• bioética
• biopolítica
• gestación por sustitución
• serie televisiva