Thanks to the Taliban’s new rules on birth, even more women will die

The faces of the midwives who delivered my children are etched into my memory: Minnie, who performed an emergency episiotomy as my eldest’s heart rate yo-yoed alarmingly, and Barbara, who calmly manoeuvred my youngest into place after her shoulder wedged itself dangerously into my pelvis.

Both babies could have died in those moments; both are here today because the midwives’ years of experience meant the procedures necessary to save them were second nature. Birth has happened like this since the Palaeolithic era: experienced women, trained in the functioning of the female body, providing wisdom and support during childbirth.

But in Afghanistan, the Taliban has decided this ancient rite must end. On Tuesday, reports indicated that it had shut down midwifery training colleges in the country, simultaneously putting a stop to one of the few professions still open to women and making birth even more hazardous.

Afghanistan was already one of the most dangerous places in the world to give birth, with one woman dying in childbirth every two hours. But as Heather Barr, the interim women’s rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch, told The Independent: “The Taliban have also banned women from being treated by male healthcare professionals.”

So in the future women will, presumably, be expected to labour without the help of any trained practitioners. And it doesn’t take an expert to predict what comes next.

As the number of midwives operating in the country falls (the UN had already estimated that Afghanistan needed 18,000 more to meet demand) maternal mortality will rocket.

Should we be surprised? Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, women and girls in the country have been subjected to increasingly oppressive rules: forced to cover themselves from head to toe, banned from formal education, from singing, from speaking or praying in public, and even from speaking to one another.

The reaction from the West to this gender apartheid has been… muted. Where is our anger? We should be raging. Partly because this is absolutely the West’s fault – the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan as soon as British and American troops pulled out in staggeringly haphazard fashion in 2021 – and partly because this is a particularly severe symptom of a wider phenomenon. Women’s rights are being eroded everywhere, from Afghanistan to France to the US.

“Welcome to the Age of Impunity”, David Miliband said in 2020 – a retreat from the rule of law, when people can do shocking things “and get away with it”. At the time, he mentioned the governments of Myanmar, Syria and Saudi Arabia, but since then that attitude has spread, particularly where women’s rights are concerned.

Now, in this country, violence against women is so bad the police have called it a “national emergency”, and in the nation that once oversaw global law and order, abortion bans mean women are allowed to die from treatable conditions, and an accused rapist is about to re-enter the White House.

It isn’t just governments. This impunity has spread to ordinary people, putting them at ease as they articulate their most misogynistic thoughts – like the creepy surge of “your body, my choice” tweets posted in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election.

The erosion of women’s rights seems to be starting to happen in this country, too. Just look at Nigel Farage, whose outsized influence will increase even more if his party becomes the beneficiary of a rumoured $100m donation from Elon Musk, who has requested a new parliamentary debate over Britain’s abortion laws.

In the Age of Impunity, Farage is free to make requests like that, despite the clear evidence that abortion bans in the US are causing women (and babies) to die, because people feel comfortable voicing the attitude that the Taliban is taking to its most extreme.

It’s an awkward version of the Madonna/whore complex: on one hand, women must be kept pure, because their ultimate role is motherhood. On the other, if a woman is slutty enough to get herself knocked up, she must live with the consequences – even if those consequences threaten her life.

The Taliban’s view, presumably, is that women must have babies, but if their bodies can’t perform birth properly unassisted, they aren’t worthy of the role of mother – and are, therefore, useless. In short: your body, my choice.

Which is exactly why we must be more vocal about what is happening to women in Afghanistan. Because impunity is coming for all of us. The only way to stop it is by speaking out.

Emma Haslett is managing editor at The Persistent, a newsletter dedicated to telling women’s stories, and the co-author of Big Fat Negative: An Essential Guide to Infertility, IVF and the Trials of Trying for a Baby