Yale student abortion art controversy

Aliza Shvarts is a former Yale University art student who caused major controversy in 2008 for her proposed senior performance art project. Shvarts currently attends New York University, where she is pursuing a Ph.D in Performance Studies. Shvarts is a published essayist and has appeared on MTV News, where she presented a theoretical reading of Kanye West's recent video project.

On April 17, 2008, the Yale Daily News printed an article detailing the process by which Shvarts reportedly inseminated herself artificially as many times as possible over the course of nine months, during which she also induced abortions using abortifacient drugs. The proposed exhibition of the project was to feature video recordings of the forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process. Shvarts declared that the goal of the project was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body.

"I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity," Shvarts declared. "I think that I'm creating a project that lives up to the standard of what art is supposed to be."Fox News reported that Wanda Franz, President of the National Right to Life Committee denounced Shvarts as a serial killer with "major mental problems", and likened her process of artificial insemination and induced miscarriages to Nazi experiments during the Holocaust.

Several hours after the initial story broke and a firestorm of press coverage brought down the Yale Daily News website, Yale College issued a press release affirming that the miscarriages and exhibit were performance art. In the press release, the university spokesperson revealed that rather than the alleged cube of miscarried remains, the performance had consisted in the invention of the story of their creation. "Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art," it read. "Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She 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." Shvarts, in a guest article for the Yale Daily News maintained that she had conducted artificial inseminations as well as self-induced miscarriage procedures (although she was unaware of whether she was pregnant).

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