"A Walk To Beautiful"

This past week, the PBS Science Program "Nova" aired a program titled "A Walk To Beautiful". It was about young women in Ethiopia receiving care at a Fistula Hospital in Addis Ababa.
Essentially the story was about very young girls, starting at around age nine, who are required to perform very strenuous labor.
Okay, that is a bad thing - against the law, in fact, in the United States. But that is only the first step. A worse fate awaits these girls. Forced to marry at this age, they become pregnant before their bodies are developed. The result of the pregnancy and birth is severe tissue damage. In the case of the girl whose story was the feature of the program, the fistula was a rip in the tissues dividing her colon, bladder and vaginal canal. (Forgive me if my medical terms are not exact.) While it may turn your stomach, it is easy to imagine the results of this injury.
When her body attempted to deliver, it was impossible. After five days in labor the infant died, but was still not delivered. Unbelievably, this child received no sympathy from her family. Instead she was reviled and forced to live in a lean-to she had constructed on the back of her family's house.
Finally, through some miraculous turn of events, she was directed to the Fistula Hospital, a 23-hour journey by bus and by foot.
There, caring medical professionals performed several surgeries and managed to restore her health.
"Normal" again, this little girl refused to return to her home where she had been treated so badly. Instead she went to another African city where she was given a home and employed as a sort of nanny caring for orphaned children, mostly by parents who died from AIDS.
I must tell you that I have four sisters, three daughters and seven grand daughters. I happen to believe that little girls are the most fragile and most precious segment of human existence. I shed a good many tears watching "A Walk To Beautiful".
At the end of the program, I was very angry, as I imagine many of this particular program's viewers were. I was angry at a culture that permits such treatment of its children. Angry at the adults who commit these crimes. Angry at a government that cannot protect its most vulnerable citizens.
And, I have to tell you that I was also angry at one political candidate's wife who said she had never been proud of her country.
Don't get me wrong, I know abuses occur in our country. But they are not the norm. They are against the law. Perpetrators who are identified are sent to jail.
Anyone who is not proud of a country that makes a noble effort on behalf of its children is sadly out of touch with reality.