Inspiring hope from Uganda to Alabama
- Bonnie Ruder
- Mar 24
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 25
It’s never a surprise to see Alice Emasu light up an audience, as she did as a guest speaker at the 4th Annual Anarcha Lucy Betsey Day of Reckoning. The conference, held in Alabama recently, brought together doctors, midwives, doulas, scholars, journalists, lawyers, and activists, all dedicated to addressing the maternal healthcare crisis in the U.S. and globally.
Alice’s speech, “Bridging the Gap: From Montgomery to Uganda,” highlighted the stark contrast between the U.S., where many people have never heard of obstetric fistula, and Uganda, which has one of the highest rates of fistula in the world. Fistula is preventable and treatable but continues to afflict roughly half a million women globally, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
The tragic loss of two friends who died in childbirth and two others who suffered from fistula moved Alice to dedicate her life to improving reproductive and maternal healthcare in Uganda. Alice has connected thousands of women and girls in Uganda to fistula care since founding TERREWODE in 1999. And she has improved the quality of care they receive by never giving up on her vision for Uganda’s first and only state-of-the-art hospital specializing in the treatment of fistula and other childbirth injuries.
Some in the audience approached Alice after her talk saying they were so inspired, they want to visit Terrewode Women’s Community Hospital. This is how Alice builds community — and hope for a world where all women have the care they need to deliver their babies safely.
Honoring 'Mothers of Gynecology'
The Day of Reckoning conference honors three enslaved women who suffered from obstetric fistula in the 1840s. Dr. Marion Sims, a surgeon once heralded as the “Father of Gynecology,” performed brutal experiments on Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsey, operating on them without anesthesia and no concern for their pain or well-being.
Artist and activist Michelle Browder has made it her mission to remove the statue honoring Sims from the Alabama state house. (New York City removed a statue of him in Central Park in 2018).
Browder also designed and constructed a Mothers of Gynecology monument honoring Anarcha, Lucy, and Betsy, which Alice and I visited during the conference, along with Terrewode Women’s Fund Board members Lynne Dobson and Tibba Murungi Kabugu.
The four of us also shared an incredibly moving experience with conference goers, walking the Edmunds Pettus Bridge, 60 years after civil rights activists were brutally beaten there as they marched for voting rights. Here’s a photo of the four of us with Christy Turlington Burns, Founder and President of Every Mother Counts, which supports community-led solutions and advocacy to improve maternal health around the world.
Obstetric fistula may be rare here in the United States, but we have the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nations. Black women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.
This is a crisis. Reproductive justice is needed here and in Uganda and everywhere.
Bonnie Ruder, PhD, MPH, is a medical anthropologist, longtime midwife, and Executive Director of Terrewode Women’s Fund. Learn how she met Alice and co-founded Terrewode Women’s Fund.
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