The Daily Pennsylvanian :: Mara Gordon | Risking women's rights for art

It may have slipped under the radar, what with all the election news dominating the headlines - but at a little school to the north of here, a very different sort of controversy has been brewing.

My friends at Yale haven't been talking Barack vs. Hillary. They've been talking about Aliza Shvarts, a Yale senior with a very perverse interpretation of performance art.

A fine-arts major, Shvarts catapulted to national infamy last week as news of her final senior project broke in the Yale Daily News and across the blogosphere. She claimed that she has spent the past year repeatedly inseminating herself, using sperm from anonymous donors. She then took abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages, along the way filming herself and collecting the blood - all in the name of art.

"This piece - in its textual and sculptural forms - is meant to call into question the relationship between form and function as they converge on the body," Shvarts wrote in a guest column in the Yale Daily News. "It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership."

Yeah, that was my response, too - what?

Pretentious art-student speak aside, Shvarts' project is fundamentally unethical - not because she shouldn't be allowed to do it but precisely because she should.

In the past week or so, there's been a fair amount of debate on Yale's campus about whether or not Shvarts actually impregnated herself and actually induced miscarriages.

In her op-ed piece, she maintains that the whole thing is true. She says that she personally inseminated herself each month, then took an abortifacient drug - which she will not name - at the end of her menstrual cycle.

Her art project, which opened yesterday, features video footage of the miscarriages and what she says is blood preserved from the process.

In the uproar, Yale University officials have scrambled to defend the fact that her exhibit has been part of a year-long, faculty-approved project.

A university spokeswoman issued a statement that said Shvarts confessed to three Yale administrators that the abortions never actually took place - not a hoax, per se, but a "creative fiction" that used the fabricated news as part of a wider piece of performance art.

It's unclear whether or not Shvarts is telling the truth - but given the response to her project, it's sort of beside the point.

Let me be clear: I, along with many pro-choice groups on Yale's campus, believe that Shvarts is well within her rights. Her body is her body, and inducing abortions is a constitutionally-protected option, no matter how personally repellent I find her project.

Just as she is exercising her right to free expression, however, so am I. And I think she owes the millions of women for whom abortion is an important option a little more respect than this.

Shvarts isn't an activist. She hasn't claimed that her project is a pro-choice (or anti-choice, for that matter) statement.

But it's inevitable that a series of self-induced abortions will be associated with the pro-choice cause.

For example, National Right to Life Committee President Wanda Franz told Fox News, "It's clearly depraved . She's a serial killer."

Of course, being pro-choice doesn't mean running around having abortions for fun - or even for art.

But Shvarts' project has given fodder to pro-lifers and helped fuel the anti-abortion fire. Just a quick Google of her name brings up hundreds of hits on pro-life sites.

It isn't a profound artistic statement. It's a trivialization of a controversial procedure, one that may cost the pro-choice movement respect and credibility.

Our right to choose is tenuous, at best, and it's selfish for Shvarts to put it at risk.

Mara Gordon is a College senior from Washington, DC. Her e-mail is gordon@dailypennsylvanian.com. Flash Gordon appears on Wednesdays.

Comments (10)

Very well said, er, written.

Ms. Gordon, I agree. Conduct like this casts a bad shadow over the pro-choice advocates. Ms. Shvartz is clearly an idiot. The bottom line is most people will not even pay attention to point she is trying to make. The intial reaction by others and me is horror, disgust, then embarassment. I am so glad I never went to Yale, I would be embarassed that a student from my school could use such poor judgment. In reality, there is not any discussion of pro-life/choice, instead it is focused on how sick this girl is. I know very little of this girl's background, but a simple question such as , what would your mom/dad think of what you are doing?

Cliffs Notes: The only people who should address the subject of abortion in public are those who agree with me.

The "artist" made a cynical calculation that she could justify this unimaginative and narcissistic drivel as a statement on reproductive rights and rely on the arts community to stand up for her. Mara does well to point out that this empress has no clothes, no demonstrated talent, and exhibits extremely poor judgement.

Mara Gordon criticizes Aliza Shvarts' performance-art miscarriages as "trivialization of a controversial procedure�?that may cost the pro-choice movement respect and credibility." Gordon substantiates her criticism with evidence that Shvarts has "helped fuel the anti-abortion fire. Just a quick Google of her name brings up hundreds of hits on pro-life sites." In other words, artistic exercise of what Gordon considers a constitutional right has made some viewers less comfortable with that exercise. Why is this a problem? Art often raises painful issues that otherwise get ignored or rationalized away; it makes viewers uncomfortable with some aspect of their lives. One aspect of American life is that the unborn receive no legal recognition as persons--Roe v Wade states that "the word 'person,' as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn." From this follows, logically, abortion�?s legality. If the fetus is not a person, abortion is permissible; if abortion is permissible, abortion as art is permissible. Shvarts�? art makes this ramification of Roe clear. If viewers judge it intolerable, they cannot logically allow abortion; if they judge it permissible, they will have a more complete view of what legalized abortion means. In either case viewers are forced to think.

'It creates an ambiguity that isolates the locus of ontology to an act of readership.' Yeah, that was my response, too - what? Pretentious art-student speak aside, Shvarts' project is fundamentally unethical - not because she shouldn't be allowed to do it but precisely because she should. Well written? I'll start by agreeing that the subject of Shvart's work is a very tricky one. I take issue, however, with two portions of Mara's writing in the quote above. "Pretentious art-student speak" is a gross oversimplification of a very legitimate field of academic study and statements like these are, to me, particularly distasteful. Mara cites freedom of expression, but I believe she glosses over academic freedom and, rather, posits her lack of understanding of contemporary artistic dialog as grounds for (unfairly) criticizing Shvart's defense of her piece. Also, I am very wary of Mara's use of "fundamentally." Fundamentally unethical under what ethical system? It may be fundamentally unethical under Mara's system of ethics, but there are issues of tolerance and understanding of different ethical views at stake in this matter. Mara is 100% percent in the clear when she writes that everyone is entitled to freedom of expression, and Mara certainly has the freedom to express her views. I will exercise my freedom of expression here to say that I think Mara's views are too biased and narrowed towards her own specific ethical, moral and political views. I am not convinced that Mara has a true grasp of the motivation of Shvart's project and of the project of art in general. Let's talk about Shvart's work, its artistic merits/flaws and its ethical/political implications, but do so in a way that avoids over generalizations and is respectful to the diverse views on the issue. [QUOTE id="14503a57-b1e4-415b-a566-f9c24cfdb2c0"]Very well said, er, written.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE id="7da4bade-51ff-4927-93fc-178cb750f636"]Mara Gordon criticizes Aliza Shvarts' performance-art miscarriages as "trivialization of a controversial procedure�?that may cost the pro-choice movement respect and credibility." Gordon substantiates her criticism with evidence that Shvarts has "helped fuel the anti-abortion fire. Just a quick Google of her name brings up hundreds of hits on pro-life sites." In other words, artistic exercise of what Gordon considers a constitutional right has made some viewers less comfortable with that exercise. Why is this a problem? Art often raises painful issues that otherwise get ignored or rationalized away; it makes viewers uncomfortable with some aspect of their lives. One aspect of American life is that the unborn receive no legal recognition as persons--Roe v Wade states that "the word 'person,' as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn." From this follows, logically, abortion�?s legality. If the fetus is not a person, abortion is permissible; if abortion is permissible, abortion as art is permissible. Shvarts�? art makes this ramification of Roe clear. If viewers judge it intolerable, they cannot logically allow abortion; if they judge it permissible, they will have a more complete view of what legalized abortion means. In either case viewers are forced to think.[/QUOTE] I'm wondering how you would compare this to the death penalty being televised or gambled over. That's a form of presenting an already legal act to a large audience that is generally frowned upon as embodying bad taste. Essentially, if any act that is legal could be done in such a way that others would consider it to be in bad taste, does that mean it is really a rising to the surface of our visceral instinctual reaction indicating to us that the legal act itself is wrong? Or is it merely that those things which create shock value, because they're visually graphic and grotesque, affect our moral judgments? Is the ick factor really a sound base for ethical judgment?

There is nothing "trivial" about voluntarily murdering defenseless human beings in the name of Art.

The "right to choose" isn't tenuous because of people like her. It's tenuous because pro-choicers haven't yet addressed how an embryo "magically" becomes life at some point during pregnancy, before which point killing it is okay. At what point? It depends on how squeamish you are - when the child has a heart, lungs, is viable outside the womb... There is a development process to get to a mature adult human, and some of it takes place inside the womb, the rest outside. It's all in the science.

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