[Pflienews] PharmFacts E-News Update: Psycho III: Svarts sez, Yale sez, Contributors' $$$ at Risk?

[PFLI PharmAid Center]

*PharmFacts E-News Update -- 19 Apr 2008 AD

*



  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351730,00.html


  Yale Student Insists Abortion Art Project Is Real, Despite
  University's Claims of 'Creative Fiction'

Friday, April 18, 2008

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans

*A Yale University student who touched off a campus firestorm with her 
shocking claims of repeatedly artificially inseminating herself and then 
inducing miscarriages as part of an art project stood by her story 
Friday, despite statements from the university that her version of 
events is "creative fiction."*

In a guest column that ran in Friday's Yale Daily News --- which first 
reported her claims in Thursday's edition --- senior art major Aliza 
Shvarts, who is Jewish, maintained that she had conducted artificial 
inseminations and carried out what she characterized as self-induced 
miscarriage procedures, though she never actually knew whether she was 
pregnant.

"For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages," 
Shvarts wrote in Friday's column. "Using a needleless syringe, I would 
inject the sperm near my cervix within 30 minutes of its collection, so 
as to insure the possibility of fertilization.

"On the 28th day of my cycle, I would ingest an abortifacient, after 
which I would experience cramps and heavy bleeding. ... Because the 
miscarriages coincide with the expected date of menstruation (the 28th 
day of my cycle), it remains ambiguous whether the there (sic) was ever 
a fertilized ovum [sic] or not.
[For an scientifically accurate line of embryology, see PFLI's Main Page 
<cid:part4.03050607.01010205 at pfli.org>]

"The reality of the pregnancy, both for myself and for the audience, is 
a matter of reading."

    *
          o Yale Officials Conclude Student's Shocking Claim of
            'Abortion Art' Was 'Creative Fiction'
            <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351608,00.html>

She reiterated that the display, which she herself drew attention to 
with a press release circulated Wednesday, was meant to provoke 
discussion about the link between art and the human body.

"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," she wrote.

Click here to read Aliza Shvarts' column in Friday's Yale Daily News. 
<http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559>

Yale officials disputed Shvarts' story, and in a strongly-worded 
statement Thursday night said the student told several high-level 
university officials that she did not do the things she said she did in 
constructing the exhibit.

Shvarts told Yale College Dean Peter Salovey and two other senior 
officials investigating her claims that she neither impregnated herself 
nor experienced any self-induced miscarriages, the campus newspaper 
reported.

"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," Helaine S. Klasky, associate dean and vice president for public 
affairs at Yale, said in the 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."

Shvarts' campus phone has been disconnected, and she did not respond to 
e-mailed requests for an interview. While she did not explicitly mention 
Yale officials' version of events in her Friday column, Klasky told 
various media that Shvarts had indicated what she would do if the 
university contended her story was false.

"She said if Yale puts out a statement saying she did not do this, she 
would say Yale was doing that to protect its reputation," Klasky told 
The Associated Press.

The public affairs official also wrote an e-mail to the Yale Daily News 
late Thursday night saying that Shvarts "denial is part of her 
performance. We are disappointed that she would deliberately lie to the 
press in the name of art."

Shvarts shot back at the school, claiming her project was "university 
sanctioned," according to the paper.

"I'm not going to absolve them by saying it was some sort of hoax when 
it wasn't," she told the Daily News. "I started out with the university 
on board with what I was doing, and because of the media frenzy they've 
been trying to dissociate with me. Ultimately I want to get back to a 
point where they renew their support."

Shvarts said her project had the backing of Yale's Davenport College 
Dean Craig Harwood, as well as at least two faculty members within the 
School of Art.

The Yale Daily News' top editor said Friday that the paper stands by all 
its coverage of the controversy.

"The Yale Daily News stands by its original as well as its subsequent 
reporting," wrote editor in chief Andrew Mangino in an e-mail to 
FOXNews.com.

He said there had always been uncertainty as to whether or not Shvarts 
had managed to get herself pregnant and induce actual miscarriages.

"From the beginning, there was ambiguity as to whether or not Aliza 
Shvarts had successfully impregnated herself --- the original story 
points out that she did not take a pregnancy test and refused to provide 
some key details of her self-insemination," he said. "But the fact 
remains that she might have been pregnant on multiple occasions."

The art major told the paper that Yale misrepresented her explanation of 
her work to school officials, according to Mangino.

"Although an official Yale statement suggested, though did not outright 
state, that her project essentially amounted to a hoax, Ms. Shvarts told 
the News on Thursday that this very statement was misleading and an 
inaccurate representation of what she had told school officials earlier 
in the day," Mangino said.

"This story, on one level, therefore amounts to a he-said-she-said with 
ambiguous language being employed by all parties."

But the editor said the paper's coverage by a team of four reporters and 
five editors "indicates that Aliza's project is not a hoax."

Yale officials didn't respond to requests for a reaction to Shvarts' 
column, but did confirm their comments in Friday's Daily News article 
were accurate.

Before the university contended that Shvarts did not actually perform 
the acts, the story about the project sparked widespread disgust and 
outrage, with critics characterizing the young woman as sick, depraved, 
unethical and attention-seeking. Advocates on both sides of the 
abortion-rights debate condemned the exhibit.

In standing by her work, Shvarts on Friday provided further details, 
saying she is the only one who knows how many sperm donors --- whom she 
calls "fabricators" --- she used and which herbal drugs she took to 
induce the possible "miscarriages."

"To protect myself and others, only I know the number of fabricators who 
participated, the frequency and accuracy with which I inseminated and 
the specific abortifacient I used," the college senior wrote in her 
Daily News column. "Because of these measures of privacy, the piece 
exists only in its telling."

Yale issued its statement several hours after the campus paper first 
published the story on Thursday, suggesting that university officials 
had taken the young woman's claims seriously enough to launch a 
full-scale investigation and question her directly.

"Her art project includes visual representations," said Klasky. 
"[Schvarts] stated to three senior Yale University 
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351730,00.html#> officials today, 
including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she 
did not induce any miscarriages. ... Had these acts been real they would 
have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and 
physical health concerns."

Whether it's real or fake, the exhibit --- which Shvarts has described 
as a large cube suspended from the ceiling and wrapped in layers of 
plastic that are smeared with blood samples from the purported 
miscarriages mixed with Vaseline --- is slated to be unveiled next week.

Videos she claims show her experiencing induced miscarriages in her 
bathtub will be projected on the sides of the cube and the gallery walls.

"The most poignant aspect of this representation --- the part most 
meaningful in terms of its political agenda (and, incidentally, the 
aspect that has not been discussed thus far) --- is the impossibility of 
accurately identifying the resulting blood," Shvarts wrote.

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

The young woman gave Daily News reporters a tour of her studio and a 
sneak peak at the footage included in the upcoming exhibit that has 
stirred such controversy. The campus paper published a photo of Shvarts 
at work <http://www.yaledailynews.com/photos/view/11387>.

"Two News reporters demanded and received physical evidence as well as 
graphic (and, at times, bloody) photographs in order to confirm that the 
project indeed has a physical manifestation beyond the shock value of 
its public explanation," Mangino told FOXNews.com. "It does."

Before coming to Yale, Shvarts was a student at The Buckley School, a 
Los Angeles <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,351730,00.html#> prep 
school for children in kindergarten through the 12th grade. She 
graduated as valedictorian, according to Buckley's Web site --- which by 
Friday had removed archived references to Shvarts.

Buckley officials did not return calls seeking comment.

During her time at Yale, Shvarts penned an essay 
<http://my1stperiod.com/2064/2106.html> about getting her period for the 
first time in 1999, which was posted on a site called My Little Red Book 
with girls' writings about the experience.

She also apparently constructed an art installation 
<http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=5838> addressing the same subject as part 
of a series she called "Disarticulation." Both her written and art 
pieces about menstruation are titled "The Ming Period."

/The Associated Press contributed to this report./


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