Abortion Art

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In a era when depravity is the norm this initial report out of Yale University about Aliza Svarts, an undergrad art major seemed horrific but believable:

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 Aliza Shvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Shvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.

Aliza Shvarts will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube. These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be projected onto the walls of the room.

As it turns out, the above was something of a hoax, perpetrated, of course for the loftiest of reasons:

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," said Helaine S. Klasky, associate dean and vice president for public affairs in a statement sent to FOXNews.com. "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials."

"She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art," Klasky wrote.

Before the story was revealed to be a fake it met with considerable outrage in some quarters,

"It’s clearly depraved. I think the poor woman has got some major mental problems," National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz said. "She’s a serial killer. This is just a horrible thought."

Several news outlets, including Fox News picked it up and Yale launched an investigation that found the story to be a fraud, but the University was not sufficiently alarmed with Ms. Svarts, her subject matter and her duplicity to prevent her exhibition from going forward. Instead they have fallen back on that oldest of liberal excuses for letting trash corrupt the culture; its art.

The stomach-turning display will be showcased next week — complete with depictions of blood samples and videos purporting to be from the terminated pregnancies.

Critics on campus have said the display sounds like a shock-and-awe look at the highly sensitive issue of abortion and called it a sick stunt to get attention. The abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America also condemned the exhibit.

"This 'project' is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage," NARAL's communication director Ted Miller said in a statement.

But Shvarts has said the goal of the project is to encourage debate and discussion about the connection between art and the human body.

"I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts, whose age was withheld, told Yale's newspaper. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone."

Of course it isn't, Ms. Svarts.

Yale has actually accomplished what would ordinarily be the impossible. It has found something so vile and reprehensible that it has gotten the National Right To Life Committee and the NARAL Pro-Choice America to agree.

How much you want to be Ms. Svarts gets an A?

Cross-Posted on Liberty Pundit

An update on this madness can be found at Webloggin'

Wizbang is talking about it, too.