I believe this question is about the story "The Clan of One-breasted Women" by Terry Tempest Williams.
The author is from a Mormon family and they live according to The Word of Wisdom (a religious health doctrine) by eating good and healthy food and abstaining from drinking coffee, tea, alcohol, or eating and smoking tobacco. Despite their religious healthy eating, the women all acquired breast cancer. For them, cancer is a part of life and undergoing surgery to remove the tumor is deemed one of the most spiritual experience a woman can encounter.
The author wanted readers to understand that in Mormon culture, authority is respected, obedience is revered, and one is discouraged from exercising independent thinking. The instilled fear and inability to question authority ultimately leads to death. A death that one can prevent if he or she simply had the courage to speak up and speak out.
