Should Abortion Be Used for Personal Artistic Expression?

Yesterday, Yale University's Daily News published a story on a controversial senior art project in which the student, Aliza Shvarts, claimed to have artificially inseminated herself and induced abortion "as often as possible " in a nine month period.

Late yesterday, Yale officials submitted an official response claiming that the artist had confessed that the whole thing was a fiction created for the purpose of performance art.

Today, however, Shvarts has published her own response to the stories, claiming she really did inseminate herself and use abortifacients multiple times. She further claims that the question of whether she was ever pregnant or ever aborted an embryo is impossible to know. Since she used the abortifacients at the time when her period was to start, the blood flow may have included a conceived embryo, and maybe not. In fact, that's part of the point of her "art" piece, to make comment about who has authority to define things like pregnancy, abortion, and human life. At least that's my cursory reading of her essay. (Like much of modern art, Shvart's art piece is really a philosophical piece, and I'll comment on her philosophical point in a future post.)

The Yale Daily News then commented on the "clash" between Shvarts and the University and surveyed student sentiment.

As with most news stories, the most helpful thing about this story is that it provides a conversation starter. So, in that sense, Shvarts did achieve her goal. And this conversation starter doubles as an opportunity to build common ground. After all, just as most pro-choice and pro-life advocates agree that it's wrong to use abortion frivolously, most will also agree that abortion shouldn't be used as an art project.

That's common ground.

As I describe in Common Ground Without Compromise, though, this common ground provides a great opportunity to move the conversation forward to discuss disagreements.

My question is, "Why do you think abortion shouldn't be used this way?"

In the news stories I've linked above, we see some responses to this question:

"It discounts the gravity of the situation that is abortion." -pro-choice advocate

"The idea that someone would get pregnant for the explicit purpose of aborting the fetus is simply disgusting." -Christina Saffold, Yale Student

"This 'project' is offensive and insensitive to the women who have suffered the heartbreak of miscarriage." -NARAL Pro-Choice America

"Shvarts’ artwork treats humans as inanimate objects." - Yale student

(emphasis added)

Don't each of these responses lead to another question, namely, What is the unborn? If the unborn is something insignificant enough that we allow them to be legally killed, even for the sake of making an artistic (or philosophical...you be the judge) point, why be so concerned?

However you navigate the discussion once you're in it, there's no doubt most people think we should avoid using abortion in this way.

(HT: Kristan Hawkins at SFLA)

Comments

[Ryan M]

>>In fact, that's part of the point of her "art" piece, to make comment about who has authority to define things like pregnancy, abortion, and human life>>

Her "point" echoes the relativism and radical skepticism of the age. Though she may not have known whether or not she was pregnant, she either was or she was not. That NARAL condemned her acts speaks volumes.

[Jamie]

This is just a sad commentary. Makes me cry. How far we have fallen!

[Cliff Mather]

Good post, Steve. Although it is viscerally disgusting and difficult to discuss in polite company, it seems to me that unless you ascribe humanity to the unborn, the mother is free to do whatever she wants with "her" fetus -- use it for art, feed it to animals, use it to manufacture shampoo, etc.

I guess one counterpoint would be that any use of human tissue for these purposes is abhorrent -- there's nothing special about aborted fetuses. But I just don't think people would get as viscerally worked up about fingernail or hair clippings used as art or animal food. Or even amputated limbs. It's disgusting, but not morally objectionable per se.

Put another way, if we're willing to make miracle cures from embryonic stem cells, then why not make designer purses from aborted fetuses? Fashion being what it is, I'm sure there would be some cache for this sort of thing somewhere...

There always seems to be a morality play by ESC and abortion defenders, once you get into the reductio ad absurdum of their view. Abortion should be legal but rare. Cloning should be used for therapeutic purposes only. Folks of the pro-life persuasion should be diligent in denying them this move.

[Gregory]

This story just makes my stomach turn. That someone would the mind to dream up such a stunt seems indicative of how far our society has fallen.

I came across another article (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080422/od_nm/child_dc_1) that made me think of how fundamental it is to value life in any form. In it they describe how a group of dogs managed to save a baby that was buried by her mother. I realize it is not a winner-take-all kind of argument, but it seems amazing to me that even dogs know the value of a life but some humans don't.

[Anon]

Here's one way to read some of the pro-choicers' responses as non-contradictory with its own stance on abortion: if this woman went through a ton of surgeries that tied and untied her tubes and inserted some mechanism so that she never knew if the surgery were successful or not, I'd say that she hadn't killed a person but she had done something that's disgusting and insensitive to women who have trouble getting pregnant and hence take the issue of fertility much more seriously than my imaginary artist does.

By the way, it's pretty common to view a fetus as "almost" a person (sort of like a kitten). People who have this view often are pro-choice politically, but still think it's a grave decision, not to be taken lightly, and that a woman who has too many abortions has done something morally wrong even though she hasn't, strictly speaking, killed a person.