Aliza Shvarts is the Yale student who claims -- and I share Ross's skepticism about her veracity -- that she repeatedly impregnated herself and took abortifacient drugs as an "art project." Excerpt:
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."
Oh, please. It was designed precisely for that, and to goad people like me into calling her a monster. Which she is. More from the story:
The display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting.Schvarts 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.
School of Art lecturer Pia Lindman, Schvarts' senior-project advisor, could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.
Whether you really will be watching Aliza Shvarts kill her unborn children, or you will be watching Aliza Shvarts pretend to kill her unborn children, you will be watching Aliza Shvarts deny her humanity and present herself as a barbarian, to barbarians. Pia Lindman, you too should be ashamed of yourself. The entire university should. Utterly diabolical. Sick, Nazi-style stuff. The idea that this sort of thing is even conceivable, and at one of the nation's elite universities, shows how far the culture of death has come.
Thought experiment: if you are pro-choice, does this disturb you? Why, if the embryo has no moral status as human? I'm not asking in a rhetorical way; I really want to know.
(Now you just sit back and watch the whining about how mean I am to describe as a "monster" a woman who impregnates, or claims to impregnate, herself repeatedly, and given herself multiple abortions for the sake of art.)
UPDATE: Favog has the best headline for his reflection on this business: Devil and Woman at Yale.
UPDATE.2: Surprise! Yale now says the whole thing did not involve self-induced abortion, but rather was "performance art" by Shvarts. IOW, a hoax. What a total and complete cretin.
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I didn't realize you'd posted again until I happened by just now. Here you go--enjoy.
http://www.cuf.org/Faithfacts/details_view.asp?ffID=57
Sig, I think you need to read it again. It contradicts what you say and supports what I say.
Who cares? Do you harp on the theological aspects in order to avoid addressing my points regarding the natural arguments that stand on there on?
No, Max, I think it is you who have not read this carefully enough.
Catholic Theologians typically discuss the morality of three common treatments for ectopic pregnancies according to the principle of double effect.[4] One approach utilizes the drug Methotrexate (MTX), which attacks the tissue cells that connect the embryo to its mother, causing miscarriage. A surgical procedure (salpingostomy) directly removes the embryo through an incision in the fallopian tube wall. Another surgical procedure, called a salpingectomy, removes all of the tube (full salpingectomy) or only the part to which the embryo is attached (partial salpingectomy), thereby ending the pregnancy.
The majority of Catholic moralists reject MTX and salpingostomy on the basis that these two amount to no less than a direct abortion. In both cases, the embryo is directly attacked, so the death of the embryo is not the unintended evil effect, but rather the very means used to bring about the intended good effect.
To put this into simple language for you: salpingostomy means cutting a slit in the fallopian tube and removing the embryo, leaving the tube relatively undamaged. Conservative theologians agree this is not allowed, since it is not a "double effect," but rather a direct, intentional removal of the embryo. Methotrexate is a chemo drug that works on cancer because it targets fast-growing cells. That means it also kills fetal and placental cells. If administered to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, it would cause the embryo to die and be expelled before it could grow to the point where the fallopian tube would rupture and the woman's life would be endangered. That is also not allowed. This leaves salpingectomy--actually cutting out and removing a portion of the fallopian tube--as the only allowable measure. As I said, mutilating the woman unnecessarily.
And, as I said, doctors in countries where there are stringent legal penalties against abortion, interpret this in such a way that they wait until the fallopian tube has already ruptured and the woman is hemorrhaging, lest they be accused of killing an embryo before its time and go to jail.
Here's another quote for you from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which you can find online at newadvent.com:
Abortion was condemned by name, 24 July, 1895, in answer to the question whether when the mother is in immediate danger of death and there is no other means of saving her life, a physician can with a safe conscience cause abortion not by destroying the child in the womb (which was explicitly condemned in the former decree), but by giving it a chance to be born alive, though not being yet viable, it would soon expire. The answer was that he cannot. After these and other similar decisions had been given, some moralists thought they saw reasons to doubt whether an exception might not be allowed in the case of ectopic gestations. Therefore the question was submitted: "Is it ever allowed to extract from the body of the mother ectopic embryos still immature, before the sixth month after conception is completed?" The answer given, 20 March, 1902, was: "No; according to the decree of 4 May, 1898; according to which, as far as possible, earnest and opportune provision is to be made to safeguard the life of the child and of the mother. As to the time, let the questioner remember that no acceleration of birth is licit unless it be done at a time, and in ways in which, according to the usual course of things, the life of the mother and the child be provided for". Ethics, then, and the Church agree in teaching that no action is lawful which directly destroys fetal life. It is also clear that extracting the living fetus before it is viable, is destroying its life as directly as it would be killing a grown man directly to plunge him into a medium in which he cannot live, and hold him there till he expires.
They go on to say that theoretically, your beloved principle of double effect could come into play, but then define it so narrowly that it becomes difficult to see how . . . and then follow it up with this:
Of course provision must be made for the child's spiritual as well as for its physical life, and if by the treatment or operation in question the child were to be deprived of Baptism, which it could receive if the operation were not performed, then the evil would be greater than the good consequences of the operation. In this case the operation could not lawfully be performed.
So . . . if in saving the mother's life, the fetus expires before emerging to the point where it could be baptized, then the operation could not be performed, because dying unbaptized would be greater harm to the fetus than death for the woman, who is already baptized. That's certainly what I remember being taught as a child.
Whew. And you ask why I'M "harping." Maybe you should ask these guys instead.
Why do I not address your "natural arguments"? Because, to put it bluntly, they're crap. Absent divine sanction, you don't have philosophical legs to establish your arguments. Concepts of "life," "personhood," and "human" are very complex. We could go round and round for several million years. My son is a philosopher, so I know this. My solution is simple: the embryo/fetus is embedded in a woman's body. Let her make the decisons about it. Then you can go out and argue your philosophy with all the pregnant women who will put up with it.
With all due respect, I think I'm done here, because I suspect you and I are the only people watching any more, and I'm not likely to convince you! I'm sure we'll engage again on another field. ; )
"Why do I not address your "natural arguments"? Because, to put it bluntly, they're crap."
Now there's an crapless argument for you.
That's the greatest idea for a senior project I've ever heard of.
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