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This post is graphic - and not a joke. Aliza Shvarts, a senior art major at Yale, is mutilating her body, and the bodies of her unborn children . . . for her senior thesis.
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 goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.
I don’t even know what to say. The idea of this is so beyond the realm of anything that belongs in the world.
Shvarts insist her project was not for “shock value.” “I hope it inspires some sort of disclosure. 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,” she said.
What do you do about something like this? Weep, wonder, what?
HT: Phi Beta Cons
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A matter of life
I’m a guy who rarely cries about anything, but this time I just had to put my head in my hands and fall apart.
It is shocking, and hard to believe that someone would find this artistic.
But I’m sure if we wait for bit, some of our regulars will show up and praise this brilliant work.
As art, it ranks right up there with some cunningly crafted Nazi era lampshades.
At a university founded to educate ministers of the Word, is there now no one with the sense and courage to stand up and proclaim that there are moral (not to mention esthetic) boundaries to what is acceptable behavior by its students?
Just when you think society may have finally degraded itself to the bottom, someone digs yet another basement. It’s disgusting to think that she and those who’ve obviously encouraged her came from our same gene pool.
Death is a scandal to life no matter what her intentions. Perhaps her next project will be–for the sake of controvery, but not shock–euthanasia. After that I suppose she could do a series on children of famine, you know, for the disclosure factor.
This is why I’m glad I’ll be attending a medium-sized state school in the Midwest for my grad degree and not an Ivy-League school.
How can these even be considered art–even to an unredeemed mind?
I didn’t see any pictures of the exhibit, which is just as well.
We should be praying for this seriously misguided young woman–a psychologist would have a field day with what she is doing. And anyone who doesn’t react with revulsion should be ashamed.
Aren’t you glad you didn’t pay Yale tuition costs to have a child do something this degrading as a culmination of her education?
I am usually drawn by curiousity to trainwrecks and such, but this time the pit of my stomach was wrenched and I couldn’t even bear to click the links.
If anyone has wondered whether we have reached the point of no return in our culture, this should eliminate any doubt.
May God have mercy on us all.
First, why would someone go to Yale for an art degree. Not the first place I would think of for that field of study.
Second, my jaw literally dropped as I read the article. How far has society dropped that this is ok!??! One hopes she never wants children, since she may have ruined her chances to carry a child to term.
Third, I find it interesting that she refers to them as “miscarriages” instead of abortions. Maybe on some level she can’t even come to terms with what she did.
I would like to see photos - I know it’s grotesque, but I would like to see what she did with the remains of her children.
I am utterly… shocked. I’m always wary now of saying what comes to my mind: “What next? Can we get any more depraved?”
Seems there is always a “path [never] traveled” that is waiting for the next explorer.
I did click the link to comments on the first article. Seems even “pro-choice” people are repulsed by this. That’s positive, at least.
Seems even “pro-choice” people are repulsed by this.
But they shouldn’t be. It’s her body, her choice. Why should it matter what happens with the remains?
Post 12, 11 and 6 reveals why it is impossible to make common ground with you guys on reducing abortions when a person doesn’t have the “pure” pro-life view. The attitude is not as digusting as the “art” this individual is indulging in (macabre, sick and twisted *even from the view of a regular most of you would deem “unredeemed”*. But the attitude is one that prevents discussion, prevents working to reduce a thing. I have given up on the lot of you on the topic.
#13–I’m glad at least that you consider this “project” “macabre, sick and twisted”–and would add that this is evidence of the conscience that God put in each one of us.
But primarily in post #6, I was thinking of the woman herself and how tragic that she considers this art and doesn’t consider the immense personal, psychological, and–yes, spiritual–damage that it does.
Oh, #13 …
Give up on us all you like, as long as you think the project is “macabre”, we haven’t given up on you.
Coyote,
How does it prevent discussion? Please point out how I am mistaken?
All I want is consistency. If a fetus has no rights, why does it matter what is done with it? Why is it OK to abort a fetus that was unwanted, but not OK to abort a fetus for the sake of art?
Nothing new here. I recall some 15 or 20 years ago, American tax dollars (through the NEA) paid for an “art” exhibition which included an aborted fetus in a jar full of formaldehyde. Move over Michelangelo!
CoyoteBlue has a good point that I hope you all won’t breeze past.
I am pro-choice and I find what the woman in this story is doing to be appalling, disgusting, and immeasureably sad.
That is NOT a paradoxical combination of positions. But so many of you are brainwashed into believeing that “pro-choice” means having absolutely no objection to abortion under any circumstances, so you can’t wrap your minds around it.
brainwashed into believeing that “pro-choice” means having absolutely no objection to abortion under any circumstances
OK, so you are against abortion is some circumstances. Great. But why is that? I’m not trying to be difficult–I just want to know the logic behind the argument.
Forgive me if it’s been explained before and I missed it.
The problem Steve, is that the desire to reduce the number of abortions, doesn’t reduce them unless you take some action to reduce them.
And for those of us who believe abortion is murder…..
CoyoteBlue,
A post like #12, I think, is just to point out the moral and intellectual inconsistencies in the mind that rejects God. As Kimberly points out, Christians acknowledge that unbelievers do have a conscience, but the response I would hope for would be for from you would be to consider the disconnect between your conscience and your stated beliefs. It’s not surprising that you would be morally repulsed, but I would hope you would be willing to reconcile the discrepancy between your moral revulsion and the view that abortion a woman’s innate right and that a fetus is not a human being.
There is a time to talk, and a time to act.
We’ve talked about this issue for over 30 years with no significant movement on stopping this barbaric practice.
CoyoteBlue
YOU WRITE:…. “I have given up on the lot of you on the topic.”
There is no discussion when someone does such a horrific act, and then believes the project of their act is art.
Relevant quotes of interest:
* “April is the cruelest month of all.” Motto for the modernist beauty-crushers in 20th century Western art circles.
* “Art is anything you can get away with.” Andy Warhol.
* “The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty.” Barrett Newman, 1948.
* “Contemporary aesthetics has established the beauty of ugliness.” Mario Vargas Llosa.
* “I tell you I would not, I do not trust beauty, it is an invention and a lie.” Vanessa Beecroft; Performance artist, from “Scenes from an Execution.”
* “I Can‘t Imagine Ever Wanting to be White.” This was written on the lapel button given to each visitor at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial show in 1993 which also featured compacted garbage hanging from the ceiling.
* “The contents of this exhibition may cause shock, vomiting, confusion, panic, euphoria, and anxiety. If you suffer from high blood pressure, a nervous disorder or palpitations, you should consult your doctor before viewing this exhibition.” Sign posted at the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition entitled “Sensation: Young British Artists from the Satchi Collection,” in 1999. The sign was gleefully mocking the outrage that they were trying to elicit. That show also featured a portrait of the Virgin Mary surrounded by graphic pornography and elephant dung; a copy of Da Vinci‘s Last Supper with a topless female in Jesus’ place; grisly formaldehyde jars with severed animals; and a large portrait of Myra Hindley, who sexually tortured and murdered children.
SteveG,
Your position is widely held and legitimate. It stems from an emotional response, not a rational or philosophical argument. Read Peter Singer, an ethicist at Princeton University. His point is the most logical when it comes to abortion. Singer rightly argues that there is no difference between a baby in-utero the day before birth and a newborn. This is where Singer goes terribly wrong; he then argues the mother should continue to have the choice to terminate for an amount of time after birth.
This is the basis of the debate. What is the difference between the born and the unborn? I believe a new person is created every time sperm fertilizes egg, thus I am bound by my belief in the Christ’s view of humanity. If God gives his life for the guilty, I have no right to promote the destruction of the innocent.
Steve,
So if this woman followed all the safe and sterile pro-choice guidelines for killing her children, rather than is repulsive display, you’d find nothing wrong?
Pablo Picasso was also a promonent of “in your face” perversity in the name of art. He built his fame on the tidal wave of European decadence and capitalized on the popularity of perversity in some sectors of early 20th century European culture. He was also a Stalin-admirer.
In many of his portrait paintings, the more tired he became of his latest mistress, the uglier he painted them. He said there were two kinds of women in the world, ‘goddesses and doormats.’ His stated ambition was to make doormats of the goddesses.
In 1944, Picasso also came out with a play titled “How to Catch Wishes by the Tail.” It was performed in San Trope, in the South of France starring Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus. It’s theme was absurdity. Obscenities abounded in it. One scene called for a woman to urinate on stage with the sound amplified. To the dismay of the producers, nobody stirred or walked out. They were probably too desensitized (revealing a type of closed mind, aesthetically).
Knowing the art intelligentsia as I do, I’m confident that this Yale art student got an “A.”
Here’s a word for the pro-choice folks:
Change
I wanna see it.
#13 and #18
Do you understand the rules of logic?
If abortion is acceptable because the woman has the right to choose it, then it follows that it is acceptable for this Yale woman to do what she has done, because she chose to do it.
If you think that what she has done is wrong, then you are basing that idea on some other premise than “a woman has the right to choose.” You are admitting that there should be either legal or moral limits on what a person may choose. If you can admit that, then we can have a real discussion.
We can discuss what other limits there should be on abortion–such as at what stage it is permissible, for what reasons it should be permissible, and how many times it should be permissible.
But as long as your sole argument is “she has the right to choose,” then literally anything is permissible.
Honestly, I am not sure whether I am more disgusted with this pathetic woman (who SOMEHOW is not yet beyond the hope of redemption and who should be earnestly prayed for, along with those who have facilitated her in this path of darkness) or the posters such as Steveg and CoyoteBlue who attempt to move the focus off the ABSOLUTE and unequivocal wrong of abortion.
And to shift (somehow, anyhow, anything to avoid confronting the hideous truth of their nauseating nuancing of the most brutal form of murder) the focus to those of us who have said “far enough - this is wrong, the bloody business must end NOW”.
You have chained yourself to the stinking corpse of abortion ‘rights’ - what matters whether you nuance the chain to be one foot long or ten feet long - as if the distance you maintain from the horror somehow lessens the horror of the thing itself?
The thing still drags and jerks behind you with every step you take.
We can all get upset about this young woman at Yale, but she is, in large part, the product of a very sick “art” culture that is doing immeasurable harm to countless hearts across our social landscape. We are living in unprecidented wealth and luxury as a society but also in abject aesthetic poverty, not to mention moral pollution.
Hello, SteveG,
Why do you find this situation appalling and sad, and is it for any of the reasons pro-lifers in here do? If so, then what point is CoyoteBlue adding that the pro-lifers have skipped. If not, same question.
Let us fall on our knees and weep for America.
I am just sick that my country has fallen to such a low moral level that this is allowed and not condemned. God have pity on us. Klasko is right.
This woman quite obviously hates God (Proverbs 8:35-36).
Pray for her to repent, but in the meantime, leave her to her own death-loving wickedness.
A reprobate mind, a conscience seared, so that such acts are displayed for the wicked to gawk at, and have pleasure -
When someone has come to the point where they no longer are able to see such sin as anything but damnation, its time to walk away and dust off the feet.
You have chained yourself to the stinking corpse of abortion ‘rights’ - what matters whether you nuance the chain to be one foot long or ten feet long - as if the distance you maintain from the horror somehow lessens the horror of the thing itself?
The thing still drags and jerks behind you with every step you take.
Wow! Drill, Very well stated. You really should write a book. You paint great pictures with words.
CoyoteBlue I said that there is a time to talk and a time to act. Tell me something that hasn’t already been said. What nuances to the argument are yet to be discussed.
I have been following this “debate/discussion” for 30 plus years. In the past 10 or so I haven’t heard anything new. Except of course that so called “partial birth abortion” was a relatively new way of dismembering children during that time and pro-choicers don’t even want to give in on that.
It can be called choice, research or art, but one thing never changes, there is nascent life that is being destroyed and way too many of us seem to be willing to look the other way.
She says her intention was not “for shock value”. Yet what other value does the project have? And how does any other value one might gin up for it even come close ot outweighing the shock effect?
She is BS’ing us, pure and simple.
If I were to do a project using the remains of Holocaust victims of victims of Darfur, how would I be able to avoid the attack as to doing it “for shock value”?
#24: The impulse of modern art is the desire to destroy beauty.” Barrett Newman, 1948.
Keats: Beauty is truth, truth beauty: that is all you know in life, and all you need to know.
That’s truer than we know–even us Christians–and modern art violates that.
I would take this story with a grain of salt. Homemade artificial insemination resulting in several pregnancies over nine months, terminated with the use of unreliable legal non-prescription herbal drugs, with no medical supervision whatsoever, and sperm donors tested for disease, approved by an advisor? I don’t think so.
This is an example of performing art, not visual art. The story is mostly bogus.
KRM,
If you were to — “If I were to do a project using the remains of Holocaust victims of victims of Darfur, how would I be able to avoid the attack as to doing it “for shock value”?” — You would be front page news, not to mention most likely arrested.
The world has become NUMB with sin. Pornography, abortion and every sinful practice known under the sun is flaunted for everyone to look and choose.
Shock value? It doesn’t seem to shock a few of the posters here on WoW, they took it in stride as if it really isn’t a problem, except with those of us who are repulsed by such an act.
Victoria–
NUMB is right … a few hundred years ago, abortions themselves were just as horrid as what this woman has done.
Now think–in a few hundred years, will humanity have become so calloused as to accept art that preys on human life, without a quiver in their bellies?
God save us from ourselves.
Aliza Shvarts and Ted Bundy have a lot in common: they are both serial killers.
Ted Bundy murdered to satisfy his perverted lust and psychopathic impulses.
Aliza Shvarts murdered to satisfy her own sick and hellish perversions—whatever they are.
They will both answer to God.
and not a joke
Harrison, you really should have thought this one through. You have one source - a student newspaper. Reporting on a student art project. And even that suspiciously avoids the word pregnant, or conceive. Obvious questions are unanswered, and no corroboration is provided.
They through out red meat and are watching the feeding frenzy. It must be quite amusing for them.
We act like starved animals, like Pavlov’s dog. It’s pure instinct - it fits our narrative, so it must be true. It’s too good (or, bad) for someone to make it up. No thinking is necessary.
Amphipolis, I tend to agree with you. Perhaps Yale needed some attention.
I read about this before I came here and on a regular news site.
Numb? You bet.
How could anyone be so disconnected?
No pro-choice person can be appalled. This is what abortion is.
Amph might be correct on this. The student uses artificial insemination and abortifacients, yet eschews medical attention (”she did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated miscarriages”)? How is this even possible? Wouldn’t she have to see medical personnel in order to acquire the drugs and receive the inseminations?
Have you ever heard of a turkey baster, TJ?
Gross. Now I’m wondering about the likelihood of success with such a sophisticated delving into the realm of reproductive medicine by an art major.
Turkey basters have been known to work in the reproductive arena, TJ. Gross it may be, even under the “best” of circumstances. I won’t even describe what I was imagining as I wrote that question to you.
Looks like I’m not the only one with a good nose.
Okay, jump through the hoop she’s holding up for you. Get outraged.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/04/abortion-as-art-possibly-hoax-i-think.html
Graceland at #19: OK, so you are against abortion is some circumstances. Great. But why is that? I’m not trying to be difficult–I just want to know the logic behind the argument.
Forgive me if it’s been explained before and I missed it.
Rond at #26: So if this woman followed all the safe and sterile pro-choice guidelines for killing her children, rather than is repulsive display, you’d find nothing wrong?
Kyle A at #29: If abortion is acceptable because the woman has the right to choose it, then it follows that it is acceptable for this Yale woman to do what she has done, because she chose to do it.
If you think that what she has done is wrong, then you are basing that idea on some other premise than “a woman has the right to choose.” You are admitting that there should be either legal or moral limits on what a person may choose. If you can admit that, then we can have a real discussion.
NJLawyer at #46: No pro-choice person can be appalled. This is what abortion is.
OK … so taking into account Amphipolis’s skepticism about whether there’s any truth to the story at all, I’ll respond.
The essential thing is that to me and to a lot of pro-choice people, abortion is a necessary evil … and it’s being sometimes necessary does not make it less an evil.
It is something to be done as a course of very last resort in extreme circumstances — not casually, not easily and certainly not for demonstration purposes, as this person has done (if indeed she has really done it.)
I will grant that some pro-choice people are less troubled by abortion than I am, but to assume that “pro-choice” mecessarily means “has no problem with abortion done at any stage of pregnancy for any reason” is your own ignorance.
Victoria at #41: Shock value? It doesn’t seem to shock a few of the posters here on WoW, they took it in stride as if it really isn’t a problem, except with those of us who are repulsed by such an act.
Please show me all the posts from people expressing having no problem with it, because I couldn’t find any.
OK, this is completely off-topic and might not be suitable for all eyes, but it is my understanding that the product being inseminated is somewhat susceptible to ultraviolet light, which destroys the sperm. Now, believe it or not, I learned that in a high school Ag class (yes, I grew up a hick) with regard to bull semen. That was 20+ years ago and may be untrue (at least with regard to humans). If it is true, it would seem unlikely that an art major would be able to successfully perform this procedure (including the collection of such) repeatedly in order to become pregnant. On the other hand, maybe she minored in animal husbandry.
Sorry if that is a bit too graphic.
I hope this is just sour grapes — merely an entirely justified sickening of your spirit expressing its bitterness. But if you or others on this blog really believe this, you have given up all hope to achieving change through rational dialog. Do you really believe that those who believe abortion is a woman’s right hate babies and love grotesque death? If so, then you must feel that they are monsters and reasoning with them is impossible.
I think Mac at #25 might be on to something. Of course a pro-choice person is going to be repulsed by this disgusting display. But I would be interested to hear SteveG or CoyoteBlue or some other abortion-rights advocate answer this:
Is Shvart’s display immoral or is it just tasteless? If it is morally wrong, why?
Maybe compare Shvartz to a hypothetical artist who uses gangrous amputated limbs in an art display. Such a display is tasteless and disgusting, but is it immoral? (Assume other conditions of morality — such as the permission of the limbs’ previous owners — are met).
but to assume that “pro-choice” mecessarily means “has no problem with abortion done at any stage of pregnancy for any reason” is your own ignorance.
STEVEG:
I’m not assuming that pro-choice means that. I am fully aware that you and others are appalled by this artist. The issue I am raising is the inconsistency that still exists in your stance.
You call it a necessary evil, but I’m curious how you define necessary. Are you talking about just rape and incest? How about sheer convenience? Wanted a boy rather than a girl? Downs syndrome?
The point is, by supporting abortion rights, you are saying that the mother’s choice trumps the rights of the fetus to be born. Whatever you choose to call the abortion dilemma, you are still saying that it is more important the mother have a choice than the evil be avoided.
I’m sincerely trying to understand your logic. Is it or is it not the mother’s choice to decide what to do with her fetus? Is it always “evil”? Is it more evil sometimes than others?
In other words, abortion is the killing of a human being, but a killing that is sometimes justified by some necessity on the mother’s part?
Do you make a distinction, then, between abortions of convenience and abortions for more serious reasons? If a woman doesn’t want a baby because it will be detrimental to her career, is she morally justified in aborting it?
JJF, I been listened to people defend partial birth abortion for years. Anyone, and I mean anyone who supported that had to hate those babies and had to be enamored of grotesque death. Absolutely. That IS a monstrous death. “You People” and by that I mean pro-choicers have been fighting to keep this means of murder legal for decades. If you people truly wanted abortion to be “safe, legal and rare” there would be no battles over parental notification, over partial-birth abortion, etc. But those battles have been ongoing. Be honest for once in your little pro-choice lives that you’ve fought, and you have fought hard, not just for the “choice” but for murder itself. You can claim to be appalled all you want, but the proof is in the pudding. The battle over partial-birth abortion wouldn’t have been fought over and over and over again, not if what you claim about yourselves is true. But that’s what happened. Just stop lying about yourselves.
Wow.
So, NJL, why are you not fighting and killing people as monstrously evil as that? In your mind pro-choicers love murder itself. It’s not that they see murder as an acceptable means to some end, or that they don’t see abortion as murder. You really think such people delight in murder for murder’s sake.
Surely if anyone deserved death, if society would benefit from the violent removal of someone, it would be such a person. So why are you in front of your computer screen right now instead of in your basement making bombs?
Your ideas and your actions are inconsistent. You either are not truly convinced by your own rhetoric or you lack the courage of your convictions.
To all who asked:
The fundamental difference of course is that pro-choicers don’t see a murder. Much, if not all of that question revolves whether you think human life begins at conception or not and if not what you believe about viability and so forth. Pro-lifers draw a sharp distinction which is morally extremely clear. The pro-choicers are less morally clear — apoint which is used to skewer virtually anything they have to say (like shooting ducks in a barrel).
We could talk about abstinence plus, but again would run inot the usual arguments about saying sex is ok or encouraging sex by saying use birth control — we’ve been there and done that too.
So how is it possible to have a conversation? Ya’ll are purists, which is fine, but that really makes it virtually impossible for a non-purist to have a pragamatic conversation with you.
Victoria — proving the point over and over. Did you even bother to read the whole post I wrote?
CoyoteBlue
If course they don’t. Murder inside the womb, then there is nothing to care for when its outside the womb. All done, all cleaned up, life goes on, school, career, etc marches forward while the infant is tossed away like so much garbage. Yep the reprobate mind can’t see it, but GOD can, and that’s who everyone will bow to one day, and mourn the loss of HIS abiding love for those who have repented, turned from sin and come to Christ as their one and only Savior.
Morally clear; yes it is morally clear not to kill children. When the unborn are killed it is nothing short of “shooting ducks in a barrel” to those who are selfish enough to care less about their own child. Yes the “duck in a barrel” is a sad comment on the pro-abortion crowd, but it fits.
What is “pragmatic” what does that mean?
Definition:
1. concerned with practical results: more concerned with practical results than with theories and principles
If we were to take your statement as to a “pragmatic conversation” we would then need to understand “practical results” and “principles” which has always been the case with pro-choice advocates. Abortion is a practical answer to pregnancy, because it dismissed the problem with the slip of a knife, and a forced entry into the world where it cannot live since GOD has not finished forming its small heart lungs, etc., yes sir that is a “practical result” coming from a “pragmatic conversation” more interested in practical results rather than principles.
I WROTE:….” Yep the reprobate mind can’t see it, but GOD can, and that’s who everyone will bow to one day, and mourn the loss of HIS abiding love for those who have repented, turned from sin and come to Christ as their one and only Savior.”
IT SHOULD READ ” Yep the reprobate mind can’t see it, but GOD can, and that’s who everyone will bow to one day, and mourn the loss of HIS abiding love, HOWEVER, for those who have repented, turned from sin and come to Christ as their one and only Savior, they will abide forever with the LORD.
My first reaction was “depraved.” But then Amph and Althouse got me thinking….
Say this is a piece of performance art where she describes a potential act, and then watches the reaction? An art provocateur, as it were.
If there were no intention to do the deed — only to describe it — where does the artist really stand? Could it be that our artist is actually
(brace yourself)
Pro-life?
What if the target is the coastal intelligentsia, those folks who are too casual about abortion? How would you rub their nose in it? Face it, as a piece of performance art, this would be just the thing. Too absurd? Think this.
Graceland at #55: I’m not assuming that pro-choice means that. I am fully aware that you and others are appalled by this artist. The issue I am raising is the inconsistency that still exists in your stance.
You call it a necessary evil, but I’m curious how you define necessary. Are you talking about just rape and incest? How about sheer convenience? Wanted a boy rather than a girl? Downs syndrome?
(This is for JJF at #56 as well).
The reason for choice is to leave it between the woman, her conscience and her doctor to make that call. I admit that it has led to a lot of people doing it for reasons I think are too casual; but the pro-life side takes an absolutist view that would leave it never an option, and I can’t agree with that.
My position is inconsistent, I readily admit. This is a difficult issue that does not, for me, have any easy answers.
But think of it like this: When Hurricane Katrina devastated southern Louisiana, many of the people who had not fled beforehand survived by taking food and water from stores. It was technically stealing, but only the hardest hardline law-and-order type would demand that they be prosecuted for it. On the other hand, an acceptance of stealing for survival in a disaster does not justify stealing an iPod because you just happen to want one.
The hardliners who would throw the survival-stealers in jail are like the pro-lifers who can admit no circumstance where abortion is the lesser evil. The people who would steal just for material gain when it’s not needed are like women who have abortions for frivolous reasons. Somewhere in between those poles is where I am.
Does it matter to the discussion that Shvarts’ project is a work of fiction?
Thanks for the link, SG!
This statement appears at the end: “Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.”
Very interesting, indeed!
I assumed this was a hoax when I first read it this morning. It’s got “urban myth” written all over it. Matter of fact, I tabbed right over to Snopes to see it was there yet. It wasn’t (too new?) but I bet it will be in a few days.
SG,
Not really. We’re all caught up in our thought experiment right now.
Perhaps as the artist intended.
SteveG:
I appreciate your honesty, but I would say you are not that casual with moral judgments in other areas. Take, for example, a recent WotW post about fathers in India killing their infant daughters to avoid paying dowries when the girls reach marriageable age. I doubt you would argue that the decision about whether to kill your infant is a difficult one that should be left to individual fathers, and sure sometimes fathers who really could afford a daughter kill their baby girls anyway but hey what can you do. I doubt you’re that casual about aggressive wars (it’s a tough call, so let the commander in chief decide).
CoyoteBlue:
It’s really not that simple. SteveG apparently believes abortion is murder, but murder that can be justified. And NJLawyer believes that pro-choice groups don’t just have an honest disagreement about whether abortion kills a human life, but they know it kills a human life and relish that thought in their obsidian hearts.
JJF: I doubt you would argue that the decision about whether to kill your infant is a difficult one that should be left to individual fathers, and sure sometimes fathers who really could afford a daughter kill their baby girls anyway but hey what can you do.
No, but in that case there’s no ambiguity; the one killed is beyond doubt a person.
Abortion is not that simple. There is a very good argument that conception is a “bright line” that makes the demarcation, BUT it is not the only argument. Historically, even in America, something called “quickening” — usually defined as the first discernible independent motion the fetus makes — has often been the divider. (Laws against abortion at all stages date back only to the late 19th century in America.) Roe v. Wade drew a line at viability, which might be seen as a more medically sophisticated equivalent to quickening. Before viability, Roe forbids most restrictions; after viability, states are free to restrict abortion however they see fit so long as the health and life of the mother are protected.
Even theologians are not united behind the idea that life begins at conception. It is a common position, but it is not the only one.
This is not as black-and-white an issue as it might seem to some.
SteveG apparently believes abortion is murder, but murder that can be justified.
I’m not clear on that either.
The actual inseminations and “miscarriages?!” were, as it turns out fictional. The purported artwork and project is real. It was first presented as fact and taken as such by Yale University and most who heard about it.
We can find some cheer in the almost universal repulsion expressed at this intended “performance art,” even as we rue the illogic of those who sanitize the same horror under the rubric of “choice,” in contexts where they can avoid confronting the bloody reality of what is being chosen.
So it comes down to the fact that this is just ugly perverted so-called “art,” and just more aesthetic poverty and moral pollution. I think it was also Picasso who once said that all art is a lie. While that is nonsense, this Yale student apparently thinks it is.
The Yale spokesperson said, “She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.”
Typical moral coma language.
JJF
I do agree that its not that simple on the one hand. On the other, if many of us agree whether pro choice or pro life that reducing the number of abortions is a good thing, can we not at least concentrate on the common goal and leave the moral superiority snarking aside?
Joel
Well if it was meant to provoke this kind of conversation, then perhaps it is art. Art does provoke, if it is any good at all. Very heartened that it is fiction.
I’m glad it’s fiction also, but it’s pretty horrific fiction…
There is no art in abortion.
To believe that death in some way becomes art is sick.
Death to a Believer in the LORD Jesus Christ is a new life, it isn’t art, it’s only through Christ we can be saved, there is no art here.
This piece of trash didn’t prove anything, what it did do is allow those who read much of the news to see just how tainted and vulgar our teaching institutions have become. This piece of garbage has done nothing to bolster anything, but rather to shine a glaring light upon those who study at University, ….. would that mean a scholarship or any sort of aid which could have gone to a potential cause to better the medical community, or mankind? …. or prove how putrid art can become and then try to intellectualize it?
Coyoteblue,
The point of art is to inspire, not to “provoke.” A pile of stinking garbage can provoke. A work of art must do much more than merely provoke.
Fact or fiction, this unartistic provocation is still sick.
SteveG:
BUT it is not the only argument.
Nobody said it was the only argument. There have been many lines that have been suggested. Should we arbitrarily choose one, or should we do the thinking that is required to compare them? Each can be investigated - compare the immediate before and after, compare the magnitude of the change, if it were isolated at the line and examined would it be clear that the change had taken place (is there in fact a bright line, or just an arbitrary generality), explain what it is that came before and why it is not just a younger person.
If life exists, it must begin. What we say is that conception is obviously the bright line. Nothing else compares. Nothing else is even in the ballpark. Reason it out for yourself, as I once did - few arguments are clearer. It is indeed black and white for those with the courage to think.