A new documentary by a pro-abortion and pro-life filmmaker team is gaining attention for trying to honestly tackle the issue of abortion risks to women.
The film “HUSH” investigates whether women are being told the truth about abortion and its potential health risks. The abortion industry regularly denies evidence that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer, infertility, preterm birth, depression and other health problems. They fight state informed consent laws that require abortion facilities to inform women of these potential risks, claiming that they are not true.
Canadian filmmaker Punam Kumar Gill, who identifies as pro-choice, said she wanted to find out the truth about abortion risks and whether they are real, as pro-lifers say, or overblown, as abortion activists claim.
Hollywood North Magazine recently reviewed the documentary:
Although Ms. Gill accepts society’s view of abortion as a woman’s right and is put off by the “self-righteous” tone of the pro-life side, she begins to wonder if women have access to all the information they need when making the choice.
She starts out watching media reports on the issue that consist of heated arguments and undisguised mockery. From there, she attempts to gather facts from scientific organizations and finds most of them unwilling even to talk to her — at one point, we see a security guard escorting her out of the National Cancer Institute. A doctor tells her flatly that there are no long-term consequences to abortion. Ordinary people on the street want to know what side she’s on before giving their opinions. How to get at the truth? It’s difficult for Ms. Gill — and this is a difficult film to watch, though also one of the most worth watching.
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The quest has a personal note as she’s learned her own late-term miscarriage may have affected her risk of breast cancer.
According to the media outlet, the people involved in producing the film have different views about abortion: Gill is the director and calls herself pro-choice, but executive producer Drew Martin says he is pro-life, and producer Joses Martin describes himself as “neutral.”
Martin said the filmmakers worked hard to set aside their opinions about abortion itself and focus on finding out accurate information about the potential long-term health effects of abortion on women.
The filmmakers told The Catholic Register that they faced a lot of roadblocks because many groups just did not want to talk about such a controversial issue.
“Nobody wanted to talk to us because they assumed the worst,” Martin said. “Even with individuals who are not particularly related to (abortion issues), like cancer organizations, what do they have to do with abortions, in general? But when it comes to a political topic like this… there’s a lot of defensiveness that we didn’t even expect.”
The filmmakers did manage to talk to several doctors, including renowned researchers Joel Brind, Angela Lanfranchi and Priscilla Coleman, whose research has shown a link between abortion and an increased risk of breast cancer. In an article at LifeNews in March, Brind reported a shocking new study that found a 58-percent to 108-percent increased risk of breast cancer for women who have abortions.
The “HUSH” filmmakers also talked to several women who had physical and psychological complications after their abortions. One is Tasha Deschambault who had two abortions when she was 19.
She told more of her story to the Catholic news outlet:
“Personally, I have met a lot of post-abortive women and I have not met one that has not had medical repercussions as a result of their abortion,” said Tasha Deschambault.
“When I watched the film, it was when I realized that my son’s health issues were a direct result of my previous abortions and I had no idea,” she said.
“That’s a part of the reason why I really got behind the film because I thought other women should know, when they’re making their decision, what they’re actually choosing.”
Deschambault said she wasn’t given any information about the risks involved with an abortion. She was told it would take a couple of days to recover and life will go back to normal. But for her, life was never normal again.
The film began appearing in festivals last fall, and went on tour at several university campuses this spring in Canada. The filmmakers hope to see “HUSH” widely released in the fall of 2016.
