Women Dressed As Handmaids Protest Anti-Abortion Laws (Again)

Not all heroes wear capes: Some wear cloaks.

A group of 16 women arrived at the Ohio Statehouse today dressed as handmaids to protest Senate Bill 145, an anti-abortion law that would ban dilation and evacuation, which is commonly used for abortions during the second trimester.

Dressed in white bonnets and red robes, the women sat quietly throughout the hearing, entering and exiting the building in a solemn line, according to photos posted by NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio and shared by Huffington Post.

Ohio isn't the only state experiencing an influx of cloaked protests, either. Earlier this year, women protested similarly in Missouri and in Texas, as the state's government continues to make getting an abortion increasingly more difficult.

Many doctors concur that the dilation and evacuation abortion (D&E) method — in which a medical professional dilates the patient's cervix and extracts the fetus through a suction device — is a safe procedure used for pregnancies over 12–14 weeks.

As Huffington Post notes, a ban on D&E will impact women "who are already at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining timely abortion care," especially since abortion clinics across the U.S. are shutting their doors.

These controversial bans come at a time when states such as Iowa are banning 20-week abortions and the federal government is taking extreme measures to strip women of their reproductive rights.

Since Trump stepped into the Oval Office, he's appointed anti-abortion activist Charmaine Yeost to a senior position at the Department of Health and Human Services, signed an executive order protecting "religious liberty" — a move that could limit women's access to birth control and abortions — and proposed a budget that would slash funding to Planned Parenthood.

But what Trump and his administration have failed to acknowledge during their vitriolic mission to take away reproductive rights is that the number of abortions in the U.S. has actually decreased substantially since 1980. CNN reported that according to the CDC, the number of abortions in 2013 (the most recent year with data) was 644,435 compared to 1980's 1,297,606.