Transcriber: Adrienne Lin Reviewer: Allam Zedan
I'm Bertha French, and I'd like to start out
by telling you a little story.
I'd like to introduce you to Winnie.
Winnie was born in the United States in 1835,
as a slave on the Barbara plantation in Orange County, Virginia.
Orange County, as you may guess,
was named after your prince
of Orange, William III.
And Virginia, at the time,
was full of a lot of tobacco plantations,
and probably were home
to some of the wealthiest citizens in the young country.
James Barber was one of them.
At the time,
these land-owning families that owned these large plantations
relied heavily on slave labor.
And that translated into some pretty intense power dynamics,
as you can imagine.
Winnie was, as I mentioned,
born on such a plantation,
and many female slaves at the time were considered very valuable,
because they could reproduce.
Some even considered them more valuable
than some of the hardest working male laborers in the fields.
Thomas Jefferson is even quoted as saying
that "what she produces is an addition to the capital,
while his labors disappear in mere consumption."
So I'll continue by mentioning the fact that,
despite the fact that Winnie lived in bondage,
she actually lived through a period of transition,
which included the emancipation of slavery,
and an era of reconstruction.
She was undaunted by some of the empty promises
that this period promised, including reparations,
and started a pretty strong legacy.
She got married to a fellow slave
on a joining plantation -- or former slave --
and was very determined to change the lives of her daughters.
You may or may not know this,
but in addition to adding capital to plantation owners,
whereas they were also subject to sexual violence
by their masters and some of the while overseers,
Winnie, I should mention, also was the product
of a white father and a black slave.
So she was no different.
She really didn't want that fate to happen to her daughters,
so she insisted, at the time of emancipation,
to educate them, and raise them to be educated women.
I mentioned Winnie,
not to suggest that she was a victim,
but really to highlight the fact that she overcame a lot of odds.
And I should also say
that she represents
for many people
a very strong symbol of an agent of change.
And Winnie, for me, is an inspiration
because she was my great-great-grandmother.
This is a picture of one of her daughters.
She went on to be an educator herself
and felt it very important to uplift some of the black children
in their area, Virginia.
So I started out with this story, just to say that
Winnie inspires me in many ways,
and inspired the work that I have done as a researcher in public health,
in looking at reproductive health and rights
for women and girls.
And sadly today,
the condition of women and girls has not changed in many settings,
and women continue to suffer
the effects of poverty in low resource settings,
and also carry the disease burden in many situations.
Some of the development goals that are looking at maternal mortality,
have really fallen short.
And the discussion around unsafe abortion
is something that's rarely talked about,
but really constitutes a really important piece of the picture
about maternal mortality worldwide.
You may not know this, but many women die from unsafe abortion.
And, in most cases, they are living in the low resource settings
because of their lack of access to contraception and safe services.
Unsafe abortion -- and death due to unsafe abortion --
constitutes about 13% of the overall global maternal mortality rate.
And in sub-Saharan Africa, up to 50%.
Of the 46 million abortions that occur every year,
20 are in very unsafe conditions,
and the majority of those are in sub-Saharan Africa,
and in the developing world.
I'll go on to say that unsafe abortion
is defined as a procedure performed by an unskilled worker,
who does not have the appropriate technology,
or in unsafe conditions.
Some of the research that I have been involved in
has looked at some of the technologies
that can help improve the services,
or even the counseling that takes place
for women who are experiencing incomplete abortion.
And it's been shown that manual vacuum aspiration
is an important piece of technology
that can be disseminated in low resource settings
to address this issue.
And it's shown to be effective in that.
It can be used in...
Is there any way to lower the lights?
It's an important tool in decentralizing services
where women can access them in rural settings,
outside of a hospital setting,
where they may not have access to a doctor.
For example, nurse midwives are able to be trained
in this technology safely
and provide comprehensive reproductive services,
including post-abortion family planning,
which is a critical piece of the puzzle in stemming repeat abortions,
or repeat unintended pregnancies.
I should also mention that in terms of measuring
the extent of the problem of unsafe abortion,
there really is very little understanding of the true numbers,
because, as we know, some of the quality
of the health data in various countries
is not very accurate.
But community-based surveys and research have shown, for example,
in Zambia, that of the women interviewed in some of the surveys,
69% of them know of one or two women who died
from an unsafe and illegal abortion,
which kind of gives you a sense of the scope of the problem.
Research also shows that,
in addition to the under-reporting of incomplete abortion
and its effects, that family planning services
can provide important opportunities for women to receive additional care,
and not just looking at preventing an unwanted pregnancy,
but also testing for other reproductive health services,
including treatment for HIV/AIDS --
or testing -- and other sexually transmitted diseases.
So I would inplore and charge some of you --
I understand that many of you
are students in the biomedical sciences,
and are interested in careers in health,
that you consider exploring the issue
of unsafe abortion.
I think in our setting here,
we cannot imagine a girl or a woman
having to deal with the threat --
you know, a life-threatening situation --
because of the good quality of care
that exists here in Western societies.
So I would inplore you to consider
looking into adding to the research that's out there,
and also documenting ways
in which appropriate technologies can be disseminated,
especially in those low-resource settings.
Manual vacuum aspiration being one of them,
but also looking at the issue of medical abortion,
which provides women a little more independence
from having to go to a hospital setting,
or even a health service to receive care,
and can control her destiny,
within the privacy of her home.
So, with that, I would like to quote
-- some of you may have seen the Academy Awards recently --
that "no matter where you are from, your dreams are still valid."
And Iwould like to say thank you to Winnie,
for giving me the opportunity to validate her dreams.
Thank you for listening.
(Applause)