The author of “Handmaid's Tale” sends a powerful message to women about the U.S. election

The author of The Handmaid's TaleMargaret Atwood has shared a powerful and cryptic cartoon urging women to vote in the upcoming US election.

Voting for the US presidential election ends on November 5th and candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are reportedly tied in the poll.

Abortion rights have been a major debate this election cycle following the fall of the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade in 2022, something Trump celebrated.

For months, Harris has been warning Americans that Trump will go to even greater lengths to restrict reproductive freedoms than he already has, citing plans in Project 2025 – a document from the Heritage Foundation, with which Trump has multiple ties.

The former president has promised not to do this while distancing himself from Project 2025.

Atwood has now released a powerful cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich The Atlanta Journal-Constitution This suggests how important women's rights will be to the outcome of the vote.

The image shows a line of maids, complete with their red capes and white bonnets, lining up at a voting booth. After each of the women casts their vote, they throw aside their maid costumes and walk away in modern clothes.

Atwood released the cartoon without notice, but has since received numerous supportive responses. One person wrote: “Let’s leave Gilead to fiction. Everyone vote!”

Another person said: “Women will vote for their freedom.”

Current British Labor MP Stella Creasy also shared the image, adding: “If you think this is just a concern of American politics, you don't understand that even in 2024, women around the world are just at different points in standing in this queue…”

Atwood's 1985 novel is set in a dystopian version of the United States that has been taken over by a radical religious sect that has renamed the country Gilead. Under the new government, many women are enslaved and referred to as “maids,” whose sole purpose is to bear children for rich families.

The novel has since been adapted into an award-winning television show starring Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd, Bradley Whitford and Joseph Fiennes.

During Trump's rise to political power, women dressed as servants appeared at protests across the United States, with many comparing the overturn of Roe vs. Wade to the events in the book.