What's the Problem With Yale Student, Aliza Shvarts, and "Abortion as Art"?
Introduction
Aliza Shvarts, Senior Yale student, decided to do her senior art project on abortion. However, this was no ordinary art project, since Ms. Shvarts artificially inseminated herself multiple times during the fertile period of her cycle and then induced chemical abortions two weeks later. A video chronology of the nine month "art" project, in addition to a collection of bodily fluids are to be showcased next week, if all goes as planned. Of course, pro-life proponents are outraged, but surprisingly, pro-choice proponents don't seem to like the "art" either. Does this make logical sense?
Pro-choice objections?
Although Ms. Shvarts says her project is about "abortion," the secular articles tend to call it "miscarriages".1 This is technically incorrect. A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion, not man induced one. So, we really are talking about induced abortion and not a spontaneous miscarriage. Yale officials have called, the project, "creative fiction," although Ms. Shvarts herself contradicted their claim in her own article, published the next day in the Yale Daily News.2 It is uncertain that Ms. Shvarts ever became pregnant, although given the technique described, it would be unlikely that she never became pregnant during the entire 9 month of attempts.
Ted Miller, a spokesman for the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America condemned the exhibition in a written statement saying, "This 'project' is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage." However, Ms. Shvarts didn't really suffer the "heartbreak of miscarriage," but induced her own abortions. NARAL should be thrilled that Ms. Shvarts is exercising her "abortion rights" without guilt. After all, abortion is legal and is even included in the Bill of Rights!
Logical Error!!!
The main problem for NARAL and the pro-choice movement is that, although they support abortion, they know it is evil. If abortion were a good thing, then more abortion would be even better. Ms. Shvarts would be applauded for doing good. However, it is clear that even pro-abortion supporters know that abortion is evil, and the more there is, the more evil it is. However, it seems to have taken an extreme example of abortion in order to make them understand the reality of what abortion is - evil.
Conclusion
The pro-choice stance of even the most radical pro-abortion organizations shows that even they believe abortion to be evil. They decry the intentional creation of life and subsequent intentional destruction of such life. If NARAL really believed that abortion were good, they would applaud Aliza Shvarts for exercising her constitutional right of abortion.
Related Pages
- Abortion - Life, Right, Choice?- Secular Arguments Against Abortion ( 440 KB MS PowerPoint file)
- Science and Abortion - The scientific basis of the prolife position.
- The Law and Abortion - Why the law is logically inconsistent.
- Modern Eugenics: How Abortion is Getting Rid of 'Undesirables' - Abortion as a good way to get rid of minorities and poor people who might have children (God forbid!) who commit crimes.
- D & X (Partial Birth) Abortions - They are never medically necessary
- Do Fetuses Feel Pain During An Abortion? - A new scientific study shows that cortical brain responses to pain occur in infants as young as 25 weeks gestational age.
References
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"The supposed senior art project of the Davenport College senior was a
'creative fiction,' a Yale official said Thursday afternoon as students on
campus and bloggers across the country expressed colossal outrage over what Shvarts described as a documentation of a nine-month process during which
she claimed to have artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible'
while periodically taking 'abortifacient drugs' to induce
miscarriages."
Zachary Abrahamson, Thomas Kaplan and Martine Powers. 2008. University calls art project a fiction; Shvarts '08 disputes Yale's claim' Yale Daily News, April 17, 2008. -
"For the past year, I performed repeated
self-induced miscarriages. I created a group of fabricators from volunteers
who submitted to periodic STD screenings and agreed to their complete and
permanent anonymity. From the 9th to the 15th day of my menstrual cycle, the
fabricators would provide me with sperm samples, which I used to privately
self-inseminate. Using a needleless syringe, I would inject the sperm near
my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so as to insure the
possibility of fertilization. On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an
abortifacient, after which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding."
Aliza Shvarts. 2008. Shvarts explains her 'repeated self-induced miscarriages' Yale Daily News, April 18, 2008. - Samantha Broussard-Wilson. 2008. Reaction to Shvarts: Outrage, shock, disgust' Yale Daily News, April 18, 2008.
http://www.godandscience.org/doctrine/yale_abortion_as_art.html
Last updated April 18, 2008