For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

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. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for “shock value.”

Yale University officials issued a strongly worded statement Thursday night explaining that a student's shocking claim that she had artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" and then took drugs to induce miscarriages for her senior art project was "creative fiction."

The student, Aliza Shvarts, told three senior Yale University officials, including two deans, that she did not do the things she claimed in her art project, according to the statement.

"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.

The Yale Daily News broke the story earlier in the day, and before the university announced that Shvarts hadn't actually performed the acts, news of the project sparked widespread disgust and outrage.

"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."

The timing of Klasky's statement — more than 10 hours after the school paper published the story, which was picked up by several Web news outlets — indicated that Yale officials had taken Shvarts' claims seriously enough to launch a full-scale investigation.

"Her art project includes visual representations," Klasky wrote. "[Schvarts] 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," she wrote. "Had these acts been real they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns."

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."

The senior's campus phone has been disconnected, and she did not respond to e-mailed requests for an interview.

Shvarts told the school paper that her sperm donors, whom she declined to identify, were not paid for their participation but added that she did require them to be screened for STDs.

The drugs she claimed to have taken to induce contractions and miscarriages were legal and herbal in nature, according to Shvarts — who didn't specify what they were. The art major also insisted she wasn't concerned about the effects of her research on her own body.

Had she impregnated herself, ob-gyn Dr. Manuel Alvarez said the young woman should have been worried because such actions are extremely unsafe. Alvarez, FOXNews.com's health managing editor, described forced miscarriages as "playing Russian roulette" with a pregnant woman's life.

Shvarts described her project to the Yale paper as a huge cube hanging from the ceiling and swathed in plastic sheeting smeared with her blood from the reported miscarriages. Videos taken of what the college student claimed were self-induced abortions in her bathtub will be projected both on the cube's sides and on the gallery walls.

The exhibit will be on public display from April 22 to May 1 at Yale's Holcombe T. Green Jr. Hall. Shvarts will be honored at a reception April 25.

Franz likened the depictions to the human experimentation that took place during the Holocaust. She said the Yale senior's work highlights a stark truth about American society's approach to abortion.

Alvarez, who spoke about the project before the university had announced it was a work of fiction, said a real endeavor of this kind in the name of art would be offensive, harmful and insensitive, especially to women who face difficult choices about pregnancy or who aren't able to conceive.

"Anybody who trivializes a woman’s choice to terminate a pregnancy is really not contributing anything positive to these matters," he said.