One thing I'm wondering: if the Mexican population has been rendered infertile by pollution, etc., such that no assisted reproductive technology can help, what is to stop the imported Handmaids from suffering the same fate?

Legit, and if there were more dialogue to back that up (that they just want to buy and sell fertile women as slaves because they don't have any fertile women back home, they don't care about the rest of it) I could see it. As it is, it seemed to me like they were admiring or celebrating the entire Handmaid system,…

But it makes no sense for Gilead's relatively high fertility to be A RESULT of the Handmaid system, or for secular government officials to believe it is.

But again, it only works because the writers wrote it that way this week, not because there is any logical in-world reason for it to work. It isn't internally consistent. It's bad writing.

I think you have to return to the real documents Atwood used for inspiration, and the parallels in real life. The Quiverfull/Christian Patriarchy movements are HUGE on at-home unattended birth. If you accept medical interventions, it's a sign that you don't trust God to "open and close the womb" and yadda yadda. Other…

That's an awful lot of retcon to have to write. If they stuck with Atwood's vision, they could still have their dystopia and they wouldn't have to find a way to explain why once-a-month ritualized rape is the best solution to infertility.

"In addition i also see comments saying that everyone should be tested and those who are fertile should be receiving IVF treatments which is just another way of forcing something onto people. Forcing people to take tests to see who is fertile and forcing IVF treatments and forcing women to become pregnant even if it…

To sum up: it seems like NO ONE in Gilead is actually having much sex, and the youngest, healthiest, most fertile adults might be having the least sex of all. (Atwood is explicit about this in the book — high-status men have to be old and childless to be assigned a Handmaid to rape all of 12 times a year.) This is…

"Like, Gilead is not going about it the right way, but what IS the right way?"

I had forgotten about the Japanese tourists. But yes, their being present in skirts is a lot different from the Mexican ambassador being honoured as an equal to the Commanders while wearing whatever she wants. I get they're supposed to be in an economic crisis, but if they're that willing to abandon their religious…

My thoughts exactly. They're making a book about murderous religious fundamentalism into a show about desperate people trying their best to deal with a crisis. It's not the same thing at all.

This is where various justifiable adaptational decisions are piling up to produce a perverse result.