We Are Already In A Dystopian Society

After being acquitted for performing the last abortion in North Dakota, Liz is still trying to find a job as a doctor. She applies to a posting that she sees online. However, when she meets her potential employers, they drug and kidnap her. When she wakes up, she discovers that her kidnappers are part of a cult where women’s rights are very restrictive, and they want Liz to be their OB-GYN. Will Liz be able to find a way out with the other mistreated women?

When it comes to horror or thrillers, I always wonder how the protagonist will be portrayed. Will I be screaming at them to not go into the dangerous dark room alone? Will they face the threat without a weapon? Will they let their fear and paranoia guide their actions? 

How does Liz respond to the dangers set before her? Liz honestly surprised me in the best possible way. She observed, listened, and analyzed everything that was happening in the cult compound. She saw that the women didn’t have any rights and were constantly monitored. Young girls were pushed into marriage when they started menstruating. She saw what happened when women disobeyed. By noticing those things, she knew how far to push and what things would rile people. She knew how to survive. It made it easy to follow along with Liz’s decision-making because she was using logic instead of her emotions to guide her. 

As much as I liked Liz’s wit and her will to survive, I had unresolved feelings as I read the book. When I looked up what genre this would be considered online, it stated the obvious: horror/thriller. Those I could understand because Liz’s life and the women in the compound were under threat from the cult, and there is a question about their survival. However, there were two other genres listed for this book: dystopia and science fiction. I tend to associate science fiction with the unexplained and dystopian as the world devolving. It bothered me that those were listed as genres for the book. 

Why? I had the haunting realization that our world is slipping into science fiction and dystopia. The book describes this as a near future, but in actuality we are already there. The right to abortion isn’t federally protected anymore. Liz was tried for performing an abortion to save her patient. In the US, doctors are afraid of performing abortions even if it is to save the life of a mother. 

A couple of years ago, Josseli Barnica was in the process of having a miscarriage, but the doctors couldn’t intervene. They said that they had to wait until there was no heartbeat to remove the fetus. By doing that, it left the woman open to infection, which killed her a couple of days later. In the case of Zurawski v. Texas, twenty women and two doctors sued the state for their extreme abortion laws, which caused serious illness and almost led to death. 

Abortions are not the only thing that’s becoming restrictive. Access to learning is facing attacks too. In the cult compound, Liz is an avid reader. When she goes looking for books in the compound to read, she is informed that reading was banned. The reason they stated was that it took people’s focus away from worshipping God. 

The book ban in the cult is not too far from what is happening now. There have been a lot of book bans and challenges in recent years for K-12 at an alarming rate. What is scary is that it is in a similar vein to the cult’s ideology in the book: control knowledge. When people are limited in their reading, they can be led toward one direction instead of learning that there is a multitude of ways of thinking. 

Reading Obstetrix makes you wonder how far society is from becoming like the members of the compound. Many people may say that this book doesn’t say anything about our future because it is not happening to them. However, restrictions don’t happen in a bubble. They tend to spread. People should really take the book as a warning. You never know when it’s your own rights that are being tampered with next. 

Sources

ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/josseli-barnica-death-miscarriage-texas-abortion-ban 

19thnews: https://19thnews.org/2024/05/texas-abortion-lawsuit-ruling-rejects-medical-exemptions/ 

American University: https://www.american.edu/baker/graduate/articles/impact-of-book-banning.cfm