Irish Examiner view: A week of setbacks for women’s rights

Texas and the Taliban have more in common than their citizens might acknowledge

Women gather to demand their rights under the Taliban rule during a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan. Picture: AP Photo/Wali Sabawoon

It has been a dispiriting week for the progress of women’s rights in two hugely different countries which now have more in common than their citizens might acknowledge.

In Afghanistan, where the now media savvy Taliban arranged for a female journalist to interview one of their leading militant leaders after the fall of Kabul, the honeymoon was short before they began to reveal that a leopard doesn’t change its spots.

Many female presenters have been banned from radio and television; universities have closed their doors to women; schools have shut; female police officers have been treated aggressively and, in some locations, a chaperone is required when venturing out.

Meanwhile, in the world’s greatest democracy, a cornerstone of the new invasive laws which have overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling — which restricted governmental rights to interfere in a woman’s reproductive decisions — allows a payment scheme of up to $10,000 to whistleblow on anyone who has aided or abetted an abortion.

This is a scheme which would have made East Germany’s Stasi or Ceauşescu’s Securitate blush. If it resembles anything it is the state of Gilead so horribly envisioned by Margaret Atwood.

It is another dark day for the United States.