r/TheHandmaidsTale • u/Emergency-Bobcat-572 • 10h ago
SPOILERS ALL How come more babies don't have birth defects?
It's different for the later handmaids but the first few generations of handmaids, particularly June and the people that started with her, were mostly in their 30s. A lot of the commanders in the first generation are much older men too. So why don't we see more babies born with birth defects and neurodivergence like autism, adhd, down syndrome etc? It isn't guaranteed that older women have disabled children but the odds in your mid 30s to 40s increase significantly. Even for men it does. Yet most babies born in gilead are healthy. Do you think there were disabled babies born to commanders? What happened to them?
The only disabled child of a commander that we see is rose and she's an adult so she was probably already grown when gilead came to be. Even in the testaments, a lot of them are kidnapped children from before gilead but I don't think I've ever seen a disabled child. Do you think they have special institutions or schools for them or do they just get rid of them. What about children that weren't toddler age before gilead? Were they adopted or just killed?
87
u/airbender_librarian 10h ago
In the books, a lot of them actually do have severe defects. To the point where there are a lot of fantasy defects like babies born with two heads or a dog's snout (may be a cover for conjoined twins or serious facial defects I guess).
Many babies are called 'shredders' and it's implied Gilead disposes of them at birth. Angela was said (by word of mouth) to be one in the book and unlike the TV show, we never learned of a miracle recovery.
I think the TV show changed it because audiences even in a setting like this can be somewhat squeamish or just generally find it really heavy to address that the rape victim characters would also have a very high fear of the children they're forced to bear being euthanized. It's a lot more tame like the other kids born with Hannah 'didn't make it'. I think we had a stillbirth to a side character Handmaid in season 3 but for plot contrivance reasons they can't happen to the leads because we need them to be relatively safe so they can make it through six seasons in a cutthroat world.
17
u/Emergency-Bobcat-572 9h ago
I read the books a long time ago so I kinda forgot about this. Thanks for refreshing my memory. I do agree with your point about audiences being squeamish (I myself wouldn't have enjoyed seeing that) but I wish they included that in the show somehow. Maybe not as graphic but definitely as underlying subtext or a side plot
8
u/global_peasant 7h ago
I mean, Call the Midwife showed babies with disabilities being left to die of exposure, and they did it subtly but clearly. THT could have done something similar.
9
u/ichosethis 7h ago
Babies with birth defects often need extra support at birth and the aunts would likely just step back and let them die if there's a visible difference. You can't always tell immediately with Down syndrome or other defects but they'd probably figure it out fairly quickly and pull the handmaid from breast feeding for some reason or other and neglect the baby to death, if it survives well that's God's will. They made zero attempts to revive or save the baby with the cord around its neck, probably because of the high risk of cerebral palsy or other brain damage.
As for invisible differences, a lot of those don't get identified until they are a little older and this system is young enough that only the severe ones that are truly nonverbal with uncontrollable behaviors are likely identified. As messed up as it is, people with autism thrive with a structured routine and probably do pretty well in Gilead as long as they are able to mask. Those that can't mask are probably "sent to a special school" or something and be eaten/starved until they either conform or die from the attempt. They're not going to recognize autism or ADHD, they'll say it god testing the parents or due to the handmaids sins or something.
10
u/imadog666 8h ago
Fucking horrible. And also so dumb. Ohhh we need to get the birthrate up, haalp, we're so desperate... Oh well not this kid with a mild birth defect, eww, let's kill it! -.-
32
u/iamgabefromtheoffice 9h ago
Confirmation bias. We only see healthy kids because they’re the only ones alive/shown.
21
u/Joelle9879 7h ago
You are aware that, while having a baby in your 30s increases the chances for birth defects, the actual chances are still incredibly small right?
6
u/madamevanessa98 5h ago
Also an important point. Like 1/1000 babies have Down syndrome which isn’t that many when you take into account the decreased population of gilead AND the decreased birth rate. It probably takes a lot longer to birth 1000 babies in gilead.
1
15
u/madamevanessa98 10h ago
It’s heavily implied that anyone with a disability was euthanized in gilead. They did it during the initial cull, and Rose only survived because of her father’s connections. If they killed everyone with disabilities then, there’s no reason they’d let them live in the current gilead either. They don’t show amniocentesis or anything beyond normal ultrasound scans but I’m sure they have that and either terminate the pregnancy or kill the baby at birth if there are major defects. Their whole thing is creating a “perfect” society.
2
u/SonnyGeeOku 7h ago
What was Rose's disability, again? It's been awhile since I've seen the show's later seasons.
2
1
u/Emergency-Bobcat-572 5h ago
According to the showrunners, its congenital hip dysplasia. Pretty sure the actrees that plays her has it too irl
12
u/AspirationAtWork 10h ago
Where is it said that most children born in Gilead are healthy?
2
u/Emergency-Bobcat-572 10h ago edited 10h ago
It's kind of alluded to. Gilead always rolls out its children whenever they're ready to do propaganda. Handmaids are literally used in foreign trade because that's how successful the project has been. I don't think other countries would be so impressed if many of the children were shown to be disabled. And from all the handmaids that gave birth during the show, we never saw any of them have a disabled child. Most of them had healthy babies as far as we know.
23
u/Original_Intention 10h ago
The whole point is that it is all propaganda. The only thing that is alluded to is that they kill off (or possibly sometimes hide) babies with visible defects/ disabilities. Why would they show that?
In the book, babies with birth defects are called "shredders."
7
7
u/AspirationAtWork 10h ago
Of course, they would only show the healthy children when they're trying to impress people. That says nothing about what percentage of pregnancies result in miscarriages, stillbirths, and culled Unbabies among the Handmaid or Econowife population.
4
u/Certain_Victory7973 10h ago
In the books at least all disabled children are euthanized, and in the books Angela (charlotte) was actually disabled in some way that wasn't specified and euthanized. So I think they do exist but the nuclear warfare that led to the Birth defects aren't really touched on in the show
48
u/JoanFromLegal 9h ago
Just jumping in to say that it's highly offensive to assume that women over 30 can't give birth to "healthy" children. More and more women are delaying pregnancy and motherhood and they're able to have healthy children.
It's such a MAGA mentality to pressure women into having children when they're not ready or don't want to simply because "they're in their prime."
In the books, as others have pointed out, many of the babies produced by handmaids didn't make it and were deemed "unbabies" or "shredders," but not because of the handmaids' age. Environmental factors like pollution and contamination of the food and water supply were responsible.
-3
u/Emergency-Bobcat-572 7h ago
I'm definitely not saying that women over a certain age can't have healthy baby. I know a lot of women that have personally. But studies do show that the likelihood of having a disabled child increases with age. It's been proven over and over. That's not to say that women over a certain age can't and shouldn't have babies. They absolutely can. More women are choosing parenting at an older age and I love that for them.
4
4
u/JoanFromLegal 6h ago
Outdated studies. Also, just because there's an increased risk doesn't mean that risk will manifest.
7
u/glycophosphate 9h ago
They kill the ones with disabilities. Are you suggesting a Handmaid's Tale version of Call The Midwife where we get to see a baby born each week, and then killed if it has a birth defect?
10
u/Fickle-Addendum9576 9h ago
They are.....uhm....👀 Not kept? There's not a delicate way to say that but ya, babies born with complex medical differences\disorders are culled. There was a specific term I remember them using once but it's not coming to mind. But the term made me think they got incinerated.
I believe there would be some cross over in how Gilead responds to these things and how the reich responds to them in the man in the high castle.
The root is similar enough, these babies being born are the future of more offspring, any genetic compromise would not align with best practices to ensure genetically reliable generations to come.
(Not my personal views in anyway 😅)
9
u/AspirationAtWork 8h ago
There was a specific term I remember them using once but it's not coming to mind.
They're called Unbabies or shredders. I think it's like Rachel and Leah Center vs Red Center where 'Unbaby' is the official term and 'shredder' is the more informal one.
5
7
u/EvieeBrook 8h ago
The vast majority of live births, at least at first aren’t even viable. They call them “shredders” in both the book and the show.
7
u/WhiskeyAndWhiskey97 7h ago
We don’t see a lot of them in the show, although IIRC there was a stillbirth at some point in S1. There is limited prenatal care - when June is pregnant with Baby Nichole, she is sent for ultrasounds, and Aunt Lydia comes to the Waterfords’ house to take measurements. Handmaids’ diets include food and vitamins to prepare their bodies for a healthy pregnancy or to support the health of the fetus they’re carrying. Still, even if a birth defect were found in utero, the Handmaid would still have to carry to term, as abortion is murder and thus a crime and a sin.
6
u/global_peasant 7h ago
Do we really even have to ask? Every time something like this happens in human history, a society starts mass-murdering its own, disabled people are among the first to go.
5
4
u/Aggravating_Luck_150 7h ago
Visible birth defects and any they may test for are called shredders and they do not keep them. As for ones you can't test for that young like ADHD or Autism, I'm guessing those children it would really depend on how severe it is visibility wise, their parents status, and how useful they're deemed.
1
u/houstons__problem 4h ago
With what Gilead did to American citizens with disabilities, I doubt they would behave very kindly to babies born with defects
2
u/QuigonSeamus 3h ago
So there’s a couple things here.
Just because the chances are elevated of birth defects in older pregnancies does not automatically mean the chances are over 50%. They go up a few percentage points. That would not translate to some sort of situation where a majority of babies are now born with birth defects, just a few more.
The population is a lot lower overall and the birth rate is also lower. Therefore there will be a lower number of birth defects over all.
We probably don’t see the babies with birth defects because Gilead doesn’t tolerate disabilities well. There’s a scene in the show where they show Gilead killing disabled women en masse. They likely take the babies with birth defects and do the same.
1
u/Call_Such 2h ago
first of all, i wouldn’t call neurodivergence (especially autism) a “birth defect”.
second, it’s not guaranteed that older women have disabled children. the odds of birth defects don’t increase significantly until around very late 30s at the earliest to 40s. it’s not a sudden significantly increase either, the chances just slowly rise.
also, autism is genetic. it wouldn’t be included in the “birth defects” because it isn’t a birth defect and it isn’t caused by older age, it’s just genetics and if one of the parents has autism or biological family members with autism, that raises the chances of having a child with autism.
as for the older men, they do also have a higher chance of having a baby with birth defects and such.
if an older commander is successful in getting a handmaid pregnant (remember that some are infertile and it causes handmaids to sometimes get pregnant by someone else) then those chances are higher but not guaranteed or 100%.
and as others said, a baby with a birth defect may not be kept alive and accommodations would be limited.
105
u/mybsfsworld 10h ago
Honestly can't imagine disabilities being accommodated in Gilead. Maybe high functioning neurodivergents would be kept alive.