HOAX! But not why do it for real?

Yale: Student's Art Project Only 'Creative Fiction'

By JOSH GERSTEIN, Staff Reporter of the Sun | April 17, 2008

A Yale student’s bizarre art project in which she claimed to have repeatedly impregnated and induced abortions in herself is a work of "creative fiction," the university said in a statement this afternoon.

The Yale Daily News reported this morning that Aliza Shvarts’s senior project, set to go on display next week, included video of her bleeding in her bathtub, as well as plastic sheeting layered with a mixture of Vaseline and the post-abortion blood.

"Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," a Yale spokeswoman, Helaine Klasky, said. "She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body."

Ms. Klasky went on to suggest that Yale would not have permitted a project of the sort described in the student newspaper. "Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

Why? I mean, why would these acts (had they been real) "violated basic ethical standards"? Better yet, why would anyone in Yale's administration think this? Given the basic premises of the pro-abortion argument and the claims that university-types regularly make about academic freedom, why should any of us believe this woman when she says that had these acts been real "they would have violated basic ethical standards"? I see no plausible argument--given the potent rhetorical combo of pro-abort "rights" and academic "freedom"--why this "art" student should be prevented from doing exactly what she (falsely) claimed to have done. My guess is that someone in the development office at Yale pointed out that this sort of thing tends to make donations drop, so maybe we had better sound like we think this is "unethical" (whatever THAT means!).

. . .the rest of the story? From Yale News:

But Shvarts stood by her project, calling the University’s statement [that her project wasn't real] “ultimately inaccurate.”

…Shvarts reiterated Thursday that she repeatedly use a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of her menstrual cycle, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, she said. She said she does not know whether or not she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts said, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.”

This afternoon, Shvarts showed the News footage from tapes she plans to play at the exhibit. The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup…

Yale’s statement comes after a day of widespread outrage all across the country following an article in today’s edition of the News [ah ha! thought so!] in which Shvarts described her supposed exhibition, which she said would include the video recordings well as a preserved collection of the blood from the process, which she said she is storing in a freezer [wow, this one's a class act, uh?]. . .

Recorded videos of her experiencing her miscarriages would be projected onto the four sides of the cube, Shvarts said, and similar videos would also be displayed on the walls of the room.

Many students on campus expressed outrage when told of the concept, saying it trivialized abortion [what?! so the problem with this "art" is that it presented abortion--an act these people believe is morally OK--look trivial?] and transgressed any reasonable moral boundary [and exactly what moral boundary do people who think murdering a child is OK not want to cross?]. On Thursday, the general public seemed to agree; by early evening Thursday, news outlets from The Washington Post to London’s Daily Telegraph had reported the story, and the blogosphere was ablaze in horrified debate over the supposed exhibition.

The project — at least the way Shvarts presented it in her press release and her interview — was immediately condemned Thursday by national groups on both sides of the abortion debate. . .

The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also condemned the exhibition in a written statement e-mailed to the News on Thursday.

“This ‘project’ is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage,” said Ted Miller, a spokesman for the organization [insensitive to women who have had miscarriages. . .but, what, instructive to the aborted children?]