Dear John,

The women and girls of Afghanistan were in my thoughts this past week, as we covered the recently released U.N. special rapporteur’s report on Afghanistan, which sheds light on the devastating impact of the Taliban’s gender apartheid regime in the time since they came back to power.

The report paints a grim picture of a future for Afghan women and girls, nearly three years after the Taliban takeover. Women and girls in the country are living under a brutal system of gender apartheid, experiencing the “deliberate systematized step-by-step eradication of their rights and freedoms,” and are being forced into roles “as child-bearers, child-rearers and as objects available for exploitation, including debt bondage, domestic servitude and sexual exploitation.”

And to be honest, it seems like the right wing in America is trying to push women in this country in the same direction. Just look at their policy objectives outlined in Project 2025—a roadmap for a Republican presidency that would reverse over a half-century of hard-fought progress for women and girls.

Project 2025’s abortion policies are draconian—from imposing a nationwide ban on abortion through outlawing mifepristone, the medication used in over 60 percent of all abortions; to enforcing the victorian-era Comstock law that would prohibit the mailing of any medical instruments used for abortion, effectively shutting down all abortion providers, even in states where abortion has remained legal following Dobbs.

The authors of Project 2025—80 percent of whom served in the first Trump administration—paint a picture of a nation where women are fundamentally second class citizens. These threats extend beyond just abortion rights: the plan also calls for the elimination of the Department of Education, which enforces civil rights laws including Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education; imposing blanket restrictions on gender-affirming care; and rolling back all legal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans.

And in yet another cruel policy proposal, Project 2025 would also cut back or eliminate programs that disproportionately benefit single mothers and their children. As contributing editor Carrie Baker reports in her in-depth dive into Project 2025 in our forthcoming Fall issue, the document focuses heavily on promoting Christian fundamentalist ideals of marriage—pushing patriarchal definitions of marriage and family, and stigmatizing single-parent families and gay marriage. On a policy level, this includes directing the Department of Health and Human Services to promote policies "encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families," and redirecting Title X family planning funding away from reproductive healthcare. It also recommends redirecting welfare dollars from TANF away from poor mothers and children, and towards promoting “marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy.”

I know. It's alarming, and it's dystopian.

With both Republican and Democratic national conventions coming up—the former next week, and the latter in August—we’ll be watching along with our readers how the vision for the future of women and girls in America is reflected in the parties’ platforms and candidates. You can count on Ms. to keep you informed as the lead-up to November 2024 continues.

For Equality,

Weekly Digest

Weekly Digest

Letter from an Editor | July 13, 2024

This Week's Must-Reads from Ms.

Under Gender Apartheid, Taliban See Afghan Women as ‘Child-Bearers, Child-Rearers and as Objects Available for Exploitation’

Project 2025: The Right’s Dystopian Plan to Dismantle Civil Rights and What It Means for Women

What Do Tradwives Have to Do With Democracy?

The GOP Isn’t Getting Less Radical on Abortion—They’re Getting Better at Lying