Traumatic birth, hopeful recovery in Ethiopia

"A Walk to Beautiful," a new documentary opening Friday, focuses on five poor Ethiopian women who have suffered traumatic childbirth injuries.

After enduring sometimes more than a week in labor, these women delivered stillborn babies that left them with obstetric fistula, a hole in the birth canal that causes incontinence. Abandoned by their husbands, shunned by their families and villages, they live in shame and in hiding.

The film chronicles how their lives change at the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital, where corrective surgeries have been performed since 1974. The hospital performs 1,200 fistula surgeries a year, free of charge.

More