Pink ribbons, stickers, and merchandise have flooded schools and stores for October in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The campaign is a time to raise awareness about this devastating disease that is estimated to affect about 1 in 8 women in the United States over the course of their lifetimes. Cancer research foundations and advocacy organizations emphasize preventative life style changes and early detection to combat breast cancer. One factor that is often ignored is the link between abortion and an increased risk for breast cancer.
Filmmaker Punam Kumar Gill considers herself “pro-choice” and advocates for abortion. As such, Gill is an unlikely person to bring discussion about the link between abortion and breast cancer risk into the public spotlight. Looking at the research and speaking to women who underwent abortion inspired Gill, although an unlikely spokesperson, to spread the truth in “Hush: the Documentary.”
The film, released last year, explores the link between abortion and breast cancer. The film also explores how abortion is related to preterm birth and damaging psychological effects in women. In order to conduct her research without being blinded by her own anti-Life bias, Gill teamed up with a Pro-Life executive producer, Drew Martin, and a producer neutral on abortion, Joses Martin. The team set out to examine Pro-Life and anti-Life claims about the effects of abortion and find out what the research and data show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8h-TsG0AK4
What they found over the course of researching for the film is surprising, even to those familiar with the research. Gill says, “Time after time we were denied interview by health organizations, researchers, abortion clinics, etc. Tough to do a doc or a full investigation when no one wants to talk to you!” She even claims she was escorted out of the National Cancer Institute because of her questions about the link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer.
Despite the many roadblocks to finding scientific discussion of the matter, Gill and her team were able to find experts willing to talk with them. What they learned as they reviewed decades of cancer research and talked with experts across the political spectrum was alarming. Gill, who is still anti-Life, will not say that abortion definitively poses a grave health risk to women (and she apparently ignores the obvious health risk to the preborn baby killed in abortion), but she says “to entirely deny the connection is ludicrous.”
Perhaps even more compelling than the scientific evidence is the suppression of that information to serve an anti-Life agenda. The title of the film, “Hush,” points to the conspiracy of silence surrounding the effects on women’s health of elective abortion. In a culture that embraced a woman’s “right” to end the Life of her preborn child, the mainstream media suppressed information that revealed the many negative effects of abortion. As Gill states:
What I found most sickening…is that the media and health organizations have spent their energies closing the case and vilifying those who advocate in favor of the link instead of investigating any and all reasons why breast cancer rates among young women have increased and women are dying.
You can learn more about “Hush: the Documentary” on the film’s website.