Documentary “Hush” Focuses on Physical and Mental Health Ramifications of Abortion
“What were women actually being told before abortions? How were these women actually doing afterwards?”
Just last week, my husband (a licensed therapist) and I were discussing the pro-life cause and how the lasting mental health ramifications are criminally underreported. He explained that of the many issues women face, there is seldom any trauma he’s encountered that rivals the aftermath of abortion.
A new documentary, “Hush”, explores what really happens to women, both physically and mentally post-abortion.
“Women who have an abortion history are at a higher risk for substance use, for anxiety, for depression…” one of the film’s participants explains. “This really has nothing to do with the morality of abortion, per se, it’s the morality of telling the truth about it.”
Less political and more science-based, the hope is to encourage conversation about the many under-discussed realities of abortion.
Filmmaker Punam Kumar Gill explains she’s less interested in the pro-life, pro-abortion dichotomy and more interested in the pro-information sphere.
we believed that if we could overcome our differences and work together, the outcome would be powerful towards the breaking down of political boundaries. Together we determined to maintain one goal, and only one goal, in the making of this film: to find the truth for the sake of women’s health. To do this, we would have to maintain a posture of honour towards ALL women, forgoing our personal opinions of whether abortion is right or wrong, good or bad. We united for the greater good: to ensure that the best possible care is being given to women.
In “Pro-Life” circles, hearing about the negative effects of abortion is a common thing. Churches and Crisis Pregnancy Centres will tell you about the psychological trauma, potential for physical damage, and even breast cancer, that abortion may cause.
On the other hand, in “Pro-Choice” circles, and at abortion clinics it is commonly told that the procedure is much safer than childbirth, that the psychological effects are the same as if you deliver the child, and the breast cancer connection is a closed case.
One way or another, someone is lying to women.
Sure, there were challenges exploring one of the most polarizing subjects in western culture:
What made the investigation consistently difficult is that the only people willing to speak to the subject came from extremes of the political spectrum. Any truly neutral scientists, doctors, psychologists and researchers who had looked at the subject chose to zip their mouths, ignored our calls, or deferred to others. So we determined we would have to hear everyone out, no matter their political leanings, with an open mind, and a healthy amount of skepticism.
We aren’t scientists. And we don’t claim to be. But the research involved in the making of this film was extensive. Our investigation lasted for a year, and took us all across the globe. Shooting took place in Edmonton, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Washington DC, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, California, Washington, Texas, London, England and Punjab, India.
What none of us knew going into the project, was how Punam’s health would be directly affected by the information found in the process.
“Hush” is available to rent or own here.
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Comments
“What were women actually be told…”
I’d suggest “…actually being told…”
We evolve from conception. No one actually believes in the fantasy of spontaneous conception. Not really. The cognitive dissonance is deafening and demoralizing.
The progression of “good Americans” to support the “final solution” is slowing. The defense of channeling Mengele through Planned Parenthood et al is losing hearts, minds, and souls.
“One way or another, someone is lying to women” Yep, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary don’t the people who frequent this site believe in freedom?
“Women who have an abortion history are at a higher risk for substance use, for anxiety, for depression…” one of the film’s participants explains. Oh, now I am convinced.
This article scraps the bottom of the barrel.
If a fetus is not a human, yet a baby is, at some point it must transition from not human, to human, and there must be some measurable justification, similar, yet inverse, to the measurable justifications we use to determine when a living person has become a corpse.
After all, an autopsy procedure on a living human would be murder, yet it is merely a typical operation on what, as soon as a few hours ago, was a living person, and organ harvesting typically occurs before the body has even had a chance to cool. Currently, I believe the accepted medical definition is brain death, so while someone may have an otherwise functioning body, they may still be legally dead, yet by the same token, even if one is entirely dependent on outside systematic support, if one is still brain functional, even to a very limited degree, one is still a living person, and subject to the legal protections thereof.
So, what is the similar transition point for a fetus? And, as one would clearly not harvest the beating heart of someone who may still be alive, one would certainly wish to refrain from decapitating what may be a living human being, so it behooves one that this definition survive harsh scrutiny. The “birth” metric often touted by the pro-choice faction cannot pass that test, as the ability to live without outside support is not a restriction one being human, as if dependency on life support hardware is insufficient to declare one dead, surely it is not what determines if one is a human being. This is further supported by the increasing capability of modern neonatal technology, and the ever increase prematurity that it permits to be survivable.
Functional sentience is also a poor criteria, given that children don’t appear to start forming functional memories, one of the apparent necessities for functional sentience, until they are two to three years old. One would presume that, unlike the ancient Romans, we would consider a one-year old a functional human being, and entitled to legal protection, so what makes it a human in our eyes? The ability to become a sentient does not seem to be a consideration, and while they have challenge/response capacity, that has also been observed in fetuses as early as two months.
So what, in your definition, differentiates a fetus from an infant that is sufficient to say one is human, and the other not?
A reasonable compromise is when there are brain waves. That is how we determine death. Modern medicine can keep a heart beating indefinitely through mechanical means. We can make a blob of protoplasm beat, but it won’t turn into a human being.
Churches had no rite for a miscarried a child until recently. Some conservative figured out that this was a great political issue that could be used to hijack the republican party, nobody thought a fetus was a child. George H. W. Bush was a member of PP. Trump donated to them. Do you really believe he is one of you or do you think he might be a narcissistic grifter?
Besides this article was about the ‘harm’ that comes to a woman who has an abortion. On an anecdotal basis, I have observed that to be BS. I know women who had abortions and don’t regret it for a minute. Some of them have had loving families when they were ready.
But let us go down this particular rabbit hole. One is more likely to get shot if you live in a home with a gun. So I guess we should ban guns. I know there have been horrible accidents. Do we want people having to live with the guilt of having accidentally shot a child? Let’s save them from that. Just sayin’
Being irreligious, I come at this from science.
We know of a certainty that all mammal females undergo profound physiological changes with pregnancy.
You may never have been a father, but I have. Mothers…of all mammalian species, but especially ours…bond with their unborn. Again, it’s just part of the physiology of pregnancy. Maybe it’s more, but it’s at least that.
And, if an unborn child is not a human being at conception, according to science, WTF is it?
You make suppositions and state them as fact. Then you draw the conclusions you wish. I do not have the space or time to dispute them all.
I don’t know how profound the changes are in early pregnancy. Some women don’t even know they are pregnant. Sometimes there is a spontaneous abortion. Certain mammalian species will engage in natural contraception or abortion if there is danger or a shortage of food. Certain mammalian species will let the weak die or kill competition. I think arguing your position from observations of mammalian physiology or behavior is a tricky slope you really don’t want to go down.
Obviously, certain woman choose abortion precisely because they are not bound to the fetus. They wish to terminate – something that human beings do all the time. Depending on the circumstances, posters on this site may even justify that. You do know that it is extremely likely that at least 1 innocent person was executed in Texas. Rick Perry chose to quash an inquiry because it was politically inexpedient to question the death penalty. Do you think Rick Perry sufferers from post-wrongful-execution syndrome? Do YOU suffer from that?
A man died, in a van, in police custody, of an injury he did not have when he entered the van. This site celebrated the verdict of ‘not guilty’ for each and every officer involved in the case. Was no one guilty of anything? Did he have a right to life?
WTF is it? A FETUS. Duh!
There are many stages of development in human beings. We now know why teenagers are impulsive, yet the red states tend to try them as adults when it is politically expedient. The justification cannot be that the crime was heinous. If they cannot form the same degree of intent as a full adult, then they shouldn’t be tried as an adult.
Do you really want to go down the science route or was that just rhetoric? Were you being disingenuous? Science has not demonstrated that more than a tiny percentage of women who have an abortion suffer any serious consequences.
One more thought if you are still paying attention to this thread – I underwent profound physiological changes when I got cancer. I had a multitude of feelings towards my cancer from guilt to anger and despair. I felt better when it was cut out and successfully treated. Others wanted to celebrate. I needed to be coaxed into having a big dinner.
There are women who will feel the same about an unwanted pregnancy. Perhaps a woman mated with someone unsuitable; who would not support her. Maybe she was raped. Maybe her health or life was seriously and honestly threatened (a woman in Ireland died). For these women, they may feel as I did after my treatments – Relieved, hardly happy, somewhat apprehensive. Life continues.
The idea that a majority or even a large minority of women suffer dire consequences (in this life) as a result of having an abortion is nonsense. It is a convenient fiction to add sauce to a predetermined position. It is like the TRAP laws – a justification for making abortion harder to get because it can’t be made illegal at this time.
This is pitiful!
Let’s get back to good hard science.
“Fetus” is a stage of development of any mammalian species. It is not a “thing”. A bovine fetus is an unborn bovine. A canine fetus is an unborn canine. A human fetus (despite the corruption of the term by pro-abortion advocates) is a human being.
How do we know this scientifically? Because the human family shares an absolutely unique genetic code, present at conception. Simple as that. You needn’t twist your poor logic into pretzels. And you cannot escape that obvious scientific fact.
This article was about the alleged harm to a woman from an abortion. Where is the hard science on that? It doesn’t exist.
I know you want a nice, simple, clean answer. It is not possible. If it was, you might not like the result.
Is a seed is identical to a flower? Call it an unborn flower if you wish, but it is just a seed that may or may not become a flower. Call it a weed and some people will try to kill it. Call it ‘endangered’ and some liberal will try to prevent you from killing it even if it is on your land. How would you like that?
Buddhists believe that even mosquitoes have the same life force as you. We share 60% of our DNA with them. Why are you drawing the line at ‘unborn’ humans? This is not a hypothetical. My parents were friends with a family when I was young. We children played together. In her teens, their eldest started freaking out if her family so much as killed an ant. I speculate that she was a co-founder of PETA. How are you going to feel if they gain political power and eating meat becomes a crime? Do you think PETA members can legally be undercover citizen reporters exposing conditions on factory farms? States have passed laws against that – calling it agricultural libel.
There is HARD SCIENCE that the state of Texas violated a man’s right to life. Why doesn’t that bother you? http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/07/trial-by-fire. Isn’t all life sacred? Where is the concern for the born? Few gave a damn about Cameron Todd Willingham’s children until they were dead. Then the state demanded retribution because Willingham was a bad guy. But he didn’t kill his children. Hard science was presented to Perry before the execution. He ignored it because it was expedient.
More pitiful flaying about, attempting to rationalize with complete bullshit having noting to do with the topic.
“This article was about the alleged harm to a woman from an abortion. Where is the hard science on that? It doesn’t exist.”
No. And hard science won’t ever exist on this topic. At best, we MIGHT get some “social science” on the matter. We’ve learned that is often the INVERSE of valid, and often agenda-driven.
But we do have anecdotal evidence from mothers themselves. You can, of course (and you will, given your agenda) just disregard this, and the facts respecting the bond between mothers and their unborn.
I especially was disgusted by your analogy between pregnancy and your cancer. Typical of your “logic” and moral compass. Ditto your attempt at equating a human life and a flower seed. As I say, “typical” of your immoral position.
LOL … So you demand hard science of me, but admit there is no hard science to the claim that abortion causes harm.
I don’t need to ignore your anecdotal evidence. I came of age sexually just as abortion became legal. So I know a number of woman who had legal abortions. I have direct, experiential evidence of women who were not harmed in any way, shape or form. They were glad to be able to have an abortion in a safe clinical setting. With only rare exceptions, they all went on to have families when they were ready. The exceptions never wanted children.
You don’t answer arguments. You just dismiss them as rationalizations or irrelevant. You are not very complex or subtle – a hallmark of ideologues. You use insult when you don’t understand something. You are simplistic and rigid, but the issues you address are complex and require flexibility. You see the world in black and white. You are no different than the Taliban. They claim certainty and so do you.
I asked: If life is precious and miraculous, why is it only human life; and only unborn human life at that. You don’t seem to care what happens to the children after birth. You don’t care if innocent people are executed. ‘Right to Life’ is just a slogan to you. It is just a battle flag you can rally around. You can argue, but you can’t think. You think I am unworthy because I argue against something you consider a certainty. You think I must be stupid or I would agree with you. I think you can’t answer because to answer would be to admit I have a point. To ponder what I argue would introduce doubt and you can’t stand doubt. You must be right or your belief system will shatter.
I think I gave you more credit than you deserve. I posed questions that are logical extensions or corollaries of your position. Ultimately, you fall back on morality and think your morality is unassailable – like the Taliban.
Why isn’t PETA’s position as moral than yours? What if they got a criminal law passed that forced you to be vegan because all life is precious? You can’t conceive of that or think about it because you simply KNOW that what you think is right.
How does a fertilized egg become a sentient being? I don’t know. But what I believe is that a fetus is not human until, at the earliest, it produces brain waves. Science will ultimately answer that question as it has answered other questions that were once the mistaken province of religion.
At this time, in this country, christianity is in vogue. But christianity does not answer any questions. It just tells you to insert Jesus anywhere you can’t answer a question. 200 years ago a person could only pray when one got an illness because people were ignorant of the cause of disease. Religion taught that the supernatural was causing the illness. Today, you might still pray, but I’ll bet you see a doctor. We know the causes of many illnesses because of science, not religion.
Why would you take your morality from a book written 2000 years ago – a book that is ambiguous, anyway.
On the brain function standard, the brain is an identifiable organ as early as two weeks, and the challenge response is operating before the end of the first trimester. The earliest bounds have not yet been determined, largely because it can only be examined during evasive surgery.
The only reason we know stuff is going on at two months is because we’ve been willing to perform surgery on two month old fetus, and as it turns out, they grab things.
I’m also not sure you can make the argument that miscarriages were not recognized, I can go poke, but I know St. Arsenios of Cappadocia (Russian Orthodox parish priest during the early 1800’s) was recommending to his parishioners that they read Psalm 143 (142 Septuagint) “So that God protects the mother through pregnancy, so that she does not lose the child”, and Psalm 68 (67 Septuagint) “So that women whose pregnancies fail manage to endure and become healthy.”
It is interesting the tone of the two. 142 (O Lord hear my pray, give ear to my supplication in Thy truth;) where as 67 (Let God arise and let His enemies be scattered, and let them that hate Him flee from before His face.) is much more about God’s justice for those who have been wronged (Let them be troubled at His presence, Who is a father of orphans, and a judge to the widows.), and on resurrection (and the pathways leading forth from the dead are those of the Lord’s Lord).
And that’s with no deep research, just what I had at hand, and a recollection that about a third of his stuff was concerning female centric concerns.
St. Arsenios’ blessings of a Psalter is a rather interesting list of complaint. The recommendation that Psalm 42 is good to be read “for young people, when they get ill from falling in love, and one person gets wounded and is in sorrow.” He is very much a parish priest, with a real parish, full of real people, and all the problems and issues that real people have.
A human fetus is human. It is always human.
There are possible answers to “when does the fetus become a person if it isn’t one at conception.” Quickening – the first time the fetus moves vigorously enough for the mother to feel – was often considered the moment when the soul enters the body. When I was in college, I was pretty solidly pro-choice, and I believed that the magic moment was the beginning of myelination — when the wires started getting their resistor coating.
But in order for the answer to be meaningful, one needs to be willing to grant that if the fetus is a person, its rights must be weighed against the mother’s rights. (This doesn’t necessarily mean the mother can never get an abortion — the law allows you to kill not only to protect your life but also to protect yourself from crippling injuries — but it would mean that after that point the mother’s rights aren’t the only thing to be considered.)
Or to put all that another way, is not the unjustified denial of someone their life, the ultimate denial of their freedom?
Freedom does not equal license.
And who determines the difference? What is the difference between you and the Taliban?
Besides, this article is about saving women from the alleged harm caused by having an abortion. But as the comments plainly show, that ‘concern’ is merely cover for a religious political agenda.
Abortion has more than twice the nebulous statistical risk for cancer than second hand smoke.
One surprising thing that I’ve discovered as I get older is that, in the middle of the night, everything that I’ve ever done wrong and every thoughtless or unkind word I’ve ever uttered in my entire life comes back to haunt me while I’m sleeping. Not that I’ve done anything really bad, but it’s still troublesome. The ancients probably attributed this phenomenon to “demons”. It seems to me that if I were a woman who had aborted a young life, that decision would eventually come back to torment me in the middle of the night.
Even if there is science behind this argument – and there has been NONE presented – we still have the “correlation does not constitute causation” issue to deal with. Perhaps people inclined to drug abuse are also inclined to premarital sex and abortion? So the abortion, far from causing the addictive behavior, in fact RESULTS from that predisposition. This so far sounds tendentious rather than research-driven.
The counter argument to that is that miscarriages are also seem to have significant psychological impacts. If you’ve known anyone who miscarried, they’re generally not a happy camper after that, and I seem to recall that it also correlates to an increase in divorce rate in the immediate aftermath.