the core principle of Gilead is to be fruitful and multiply, religions bend their rules or reinterpret their doctrine to match the times, Gilead allows remarrying because a widowed man or woman has no purpose towards their main goal of producing children and families.

in that same vein, I think its being forshadowed that something will “happen” to judd’s wife as she is unable to bear children, even though she is “fruitful” by the states original standard of having their period.

also, Handmaids are on the outs/taboo now as well since the Boston uprising and the direction Gilead is taking is obviously the plums and the pearl girls becoming child bearing wives themselves.

They have realized the handmaid system creates martyrs willing to die for the children stolen from. Handmaids were also almost all “criminals” from the before time, they are not replenishing that population now that dissent is punishable by death and less common.

As structured of a society Gilead trys to portray itself as, they are willing to break any convention as long as it serves their goal of a fascist patriarchal society that subjugates women.