Student 'Abortion Art' Hoax Just One of Yale's Pro-Choice Debacles
Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.Schvarts expressed hope that the project would inspire discourse. But she underestimated the intensity of the response and the disgust her actions would engender as she pushed the envelope of 'choice.' According to the Washington Post, it got very ugly very fast:Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process....
The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling....Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.
Schvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube....[that] show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.
Within hours after the article ran yesterday in the student newspaper, blogs were full of livid reactions, including horror that so many fetuses were apparently aborted, revulsion at the graphic nature of the piece, shock that someone would risk her own health in such a way, and general disdain for art and academia....The 'abortion art' story follows on the heels of another misstep by the Yale Daily News. A January 23, 2008 article entitled "Abortion demonstration marks Roe anniversary" also caused a stir. The article, which described a presentation by Yale Medical Students for Choice demonstrating abortion methods, was pulled shortly after publication online due to its less-than-sensitive content:Within hours, photos of her in leopard-print shorts and fringed boots were on the Internet, with such blog headlines as "Aliza Shvarts is One Sick Puppy" and comments furious, disgusted and bitter. ("Has she applied for an NEA grant? I am sure she is a shoe-in.") (In five years, she'll be having an auction at Sotheby's.")
....Rasha Khoury MED ’08, another member of Medical Students for Choice, who said she plans to become a gynecologist and expects to perform abortions, went on to describe one of the most common abortion procedures, manual vacuum aspiration, which “creates suction to evacuate pregnancy,” Evans said. The technique is a good option because the device involved is reusable and relatively cheap, she said.Although the original article was yanked, its contents have been mirrored by a number of pro-life websites including LifeSiteNews.com.“It’s not as scary as it seems. It’s just blood and mucus,” Khoury said, referring to the fetus remains in the device. She added, “You’ll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just miniscule.”
Related article: Aliza Shvarts 'Abortion Art' Project a 'Creative Fiction,' Yale Says
Update on April 16, 2008: Shvarts is now denying Yale's claim that it was all a 'creative fiction.'
Comments
Hitler was an artist before he led the Holocaust
May God forgive them for they know not what they do. May God forgive our country for allowing this type of murder continue and for teaching our children that it’s okay to take human life. Can we not see the correlation between this and kids killing parents, kids killing fellow students, starving handicapped people to death – the Holocaust? “You’ll be able to see arms and stuff, but still just minuscule?”???? Are you not weeping??
Wasn’t Hitler denied admission to art school because his work was rather pedestrian? I have often wondered how different history might be if Hitler had been accepted – not rejected.
Self Induced Abortion; A New Art Form
By: John Thomas, April 18, 2008
Not unlike other anarcha-feminists who use “art forms” as political propaganda Davenport College Senior and Yale University Art Major, Aliza Shvarts sought to trivialize procreation and the gut wrenching an agonizing decision that many women face everyday regarding abortion in her seriously misguided efforts to “start a discussion” with her abortion as art project. Indeed it was not a discussion at all that she intended to provoke but a statement that she intended to make. She new exactly what she was doing however she failed to predict the general outrage or that the Yale Art Department would withdraw its previous support.
Here are some of her own words describing her intentions:
“I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity, I think that I’m creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be.”
“It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it.
As an intervention into our normative understanding of the real. and its accompanying politics of convention, this performance piece has numerous conceptual goals. The first is to assert that often, normative understandings of biological function are a mythology imposed on form. It is this mythology that creates the sexist, racist, ableist, nationalist and homophobic perspective, distinguishing what body parts are meant. to do from their physical capability. The myth that a certain set of functions are natural. (while all the other potential functions are unnatural.) undermines that sense of capability, confining lifestyle choices to the bounds of normatively defined narratives.
Just as it is a myth that women are meant. to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are meant. for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not .meant. for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are meant to birth a child.”
Yale University Art Major: Aliza Shvarts
The message:
Reproductive freedom at any and all costs. Women now have all the power they need to become pregnant and to end a pregnancy without a man. Let me show you how its done.
Men are no longer needed or wanted except as an occasional play thing. Inspite of the enormous health risks a woman might take to self induce an abortion with the use of unregulated herbal medicines or RU486 it is apparently a risk worth taking all in the name of complete and total reproductive freedom or should I say complete and total isolated individualism.
What is most troublesome is that Yale University totally supported this project until it provoked an outrage. I am all for artistic freedom and expression but this has clearly crossed a line. Yale needs to examine its policy. While Ms. Shvarts is now saying that it was a “hoax” or “creative fiction” all efforts were used to communicate that it was in fact real photos of her artificially inseminating and then aborting herself on multiple occasions.
John, shortly after your comments went up I updated the post with new information. Apparently Shvarts is now saying that it wasn’t a hoax after all.
She’ll make a great republican politician.
Jesse Helms must be rolling in his grave. If this students work could be even more oversimplified and sensationalized I’m sure he could do it. Remember Mapplethorpe?
Pro-”choicers,” remember, you’re all for this kind of nonsense being legal.
Besides, the issue never was choice. The issue is making murder legal.
Funny how the conservatives react to this “hoax”,”lie” and yet don’t react to the Bush Administration.
She is a ******* genius. I laughed out loud when I read this story the other day as I knew it was a prank of epic proportion.
She should have stuck it out a little longer though, and not let the pro-life nut-jobs off the hook until after the weekend.
To Zombi Breath.
…and we wonder why our nation is so immoral. You and she are ***** perfect examples.
Alexandra: I can’t speak for others, but I don’t think anyone’s saying what she’s done is illegal or should be. She has the right to express herself however she wants. But the school can decide whether it’s something they want to promote or approve. That’s the thing about free speech: I may not like what you have to say, but I’ll go to the ends for your right to say it.
They are students who see this day in and day out. They see it from a different angle than we do. It’s understandable if you spend time around students in their future professions. Their perspective on a fetus, death and other topics is rigorous and constantly seen from a dry scientific point. This is still a free country and now I know how R v Wade came into being. Thanks to Shvartz. Now if only all those mindless meat eaters would look into the pressing issue of animal abuse and pain they are subjected to. That would surely keep you occupied if you are all so shocked by this event. There’s so much wowrse out there so get crackin’.
What a brave girl for doing this! I applaud her stance and the beautiful art she has created.