Parwana* no longer recognises her own children. Once known for her beauty in her village in Kandahar province, the 36-year-old sits on the floor of her mother’s home, rocking silently. After nine pregnancies and six miscarriages, many under pressure from her husband and in-laws, Parwana has slipped into a permanent state of confusion.

“She is lost,” says her mother, Sharifa. “They broke her with fear, pregnancies and violence.”

Since the Taliban’s informal birth-control ban began spreading across Afghanistan in 2023, the country’s reproductive health system has gone into freefall. Contraceptives have disappeared, clinics have closed and complications are going untreated.

The ban was never formally announced, but by early 2023, doctors and midwives in multiple provinces reported the same pattern: supplies arriving late, then in smaller quantities and then not at all.