The Athena Film Festival has launched the Abortion Pipeline Project (APP), which it describes as “a new fund to celebrate and support abortion stories.” It is headed by extremely pro-abortion groups and individuals.
The annual film festival takes place at the pro-abortion Barnard College in New York City, which prides itself on its efforts in “leading the way in supporting” abortion. The festival is planned for February 29 through March 3, 2024, and the new abortion project fund is a partnership between the Athena Film Festival, the festival’s Artistic Director and Co-Founder Melissa Silverstein, co-executive director of We Testify (an organization that aims to share stories about abortion) Renee Bracey Sherman, pro-abortion filmmaker Jess Jacobs, and Gretchen Sisson, the lead researcher of Abortion Onscreen at ANSIRH (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health Care at the University of California San Francisco).
We Testify is excited to collaborate with The Athena Film Festival on the Abortion Pipeline Project, an opportunity for filmmakers who create narrative screenplays that illustrate the beauty & complexity of our reproductive lives. Click the #LinkInBio for more info 📽️✨ pic.twitter.com/i7danrnloi
— We Testify (@AbortionStories) October 19, 2023
The Abortion Pipeline Project launched on October 2, opening submissions for aspiring filmakers to submit screenplays for both feature-lenght and short films that showcase abortion. The website for the project states that the decision to launch the it was inspired by the fall of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
“Through APP, we are aiming to shift the way the media and our society understand the context and complexity of abortion by elevating the voices of abortion storytellers,” states the website for the project. It aims to “influence the public’s understanding of policy and power” surrounding abortion.
Stipulations for the contest include that the film must have a “woman, trans, or non-binary character(s) in leadership role(s),” and “must contain represenation of, meaningful mention of, or thematic reference to abortion.”
The winners of the contest will be announced at the film festival and will win grant money, mentorship, and sessions with so-called experts on how to depict abortion on screen. Finalists will also meet with so-called experts to learn how to weave abortion into film — the way abortionists want them to.
ANSIRH researches abortion and trains abortionists — the very people who stand to make more money if abortion is more common. Meanwhile, its Abortion Onscreen program researches abortion stories in American film and television and keeps a database of the shows and movies that depict abortions. Now it will be a part of telling up-and-coming filmmakers how to depict abortion.
Renee Bracey Sherman, who is a former NARAL board member, once told Twitter followers, “Illegal doesn’t have to mean unsafe. With medication abortion, it’s quite safe to self-manage an abortion….” Despite claiming that taking the abortion pill at home is safe, she has encouraged women who do experience complications from the abortion pill to lie to doctors at the emergency room or urgent care about having taken the abortion drugs.
None of the groups or persons involved in the Abortion Pipeline Project are likely to be honest about what abortion looks like. If they were, viewers would see the broken bodies of the aborted children, the pressure that 64% of women with a history of abortion were under to have an abortion, and the abortion trauma with which countless women live.
In January, a report from Abortion Onscreen found that there was an increase from 2021 to 2022 in the number of television shows that featured abortion in their plot lines, and it said that in 2022, abortion stories came closer than ever before to depicting abortion how the abortion industry wants it to be depicted.
Now it seems abortion advocates want films and shows to share even more stories about abortion — and they want to ensure future filmmakers depict abortion in the way abortionists — those who profit off of abortion — want abortion to be depicted. That is clear in the fact that the winners and finalists will be taught by “experts” on how to “influence the public.”
Yet, no story that paints abortion in a positive light is sharing the truth because each of them ignores the very person at the center of the abortion — the preborn child who is being killed.
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Abortion plotlines in major film and television don’t show the truth because they don’t show what happens to the child. If they did, viewers would be more likely to see abortion for what it is: the violent and direct killing of innocent human children. Once they see abortion for what it is, they are more likely to have a change of heart as so many do when they are faced with the reality of abortion.
