Theonomy
In The Handmaid’s Tale, The Republic of Gilead is run by a Christian Fundamentalist cult, and the law of the land is motivated by their strict religious beliefs. A society run by religion was coined as a “Theonomy” by Thomas Aquinas way back in the 1200s. During The Middle Ages, society in the western world was run by a Theonomy. The common law was intertwined so tightly with religion, that any moral sins- like adultery- were punishable by death.
In the United States Constitution, there is a mandatory “separation of Church and State” that prevents a theonomy from ever happening again. But obviously, there is still a lot of political debate in dealing with moral choices. People who are pro-life are often Christian Republicans who believe that a baby has a soul since conception and that it would be murder to perform an abortion. Pro-choice advocates, on the other hand, say that in the early stages of pregnancy, the fetus is not yet a person. In many states, it was illegal to get an abortion for a very long time, and anyone who was caught getting one would be punished. It was decided that this was a religiously motivated law. The landmark Supreme Court case was Roe v. Wade in 1973, which prevented the criminalization of abortions performed before the end of the first trimester.
