Gilead’s Grasp — Would You Bend Or Break Under Its Rule?

What would you do if you woke up in Gilead?

What would you do if you…?

I’ve been asking my friends.

Gilead feels like America to me now.

In this personal account, I trace how the fall of Roe v. Wade reverberated from a mundane grocery store moment into a global warning signal.

Summer 2022, standing between dairy cases at the local co-op, I felt my phone buzz against my hip. CNN notification: the Supreme Court had overturned .

I remember the physical sensation — sweat beading along my hairline despite the refrigerator chill, my fingers gone numb around a carton of half-and-half I’d forgotten I was holding. A guy reaching for yogurt asked if I was okay. I wasn’t.

That night, I drank too much wine and cheap Malbec, which left purple stains on my lips. I slumped over my desk, scrolling through reactions, the bottle sweating rings onto the compliance reports I’d abandoned.

My thoughts drifted to my nieces in Trinidad — safe, I told myself, from this particular American nightmare. But was anyone really safe? Their mother, my sister, had texted: “It’s all over the news here too.”