Abortions for Art – UPDATE

:::UPDATE::: Yale says FAKE; this is performance art. I must admit my mind would never go there, but if it’s a hoax, as I had hoped, then good.:::END UPDATE:::

If the story is true, and it is so mind-boggling I want to believe it’s a hoax, then its breaking during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI (where we watched the pontiff pause in his exit from mass at National’s Stadium to kiss the forehead of a sleeping infant) will bring into full focus the contrast between the Culture of Life and the Culture of Death.

Art major Aliza Shvarts ’08 wants to make a statement.

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 “forced miscarriages” should be rightly called “self-induced abortions.”

Just yesterday the reviled President Bush said:

In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed, each of us is loved. And your message that each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary. In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism and embrace a culture of justice and truth.

Benedict – who famously cautioned us on the “dictatorship of relativism”, said in reply:

The preservation of freedom calls for the cultivation of virtue, self-discipline, sacrifice for the common good and a sense of responsibility towards the less fortunate….freedom is ever new. It is a challenge held out to each generation, and it must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Few have understood this as clearly as the late Pope John Paul II…he reminded us that history shows, time and again, that “in a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation”, and a democracy without values can lose its very soul.

If the story is true, pray for this young woman; she is in serious, serious trouble. This poor young woman is apparently so much a product of the world and the secularist mindset that she has lost touch with her own understanding of her body, her sexuality and her humanness as something more than tissue and utilitarian mass. How hopelessly bleak.

Benedict is here to teach us of “Christ, Our Hope.” This girl has no hope in her. She may have ambition, but hope is gone. It cannot exist in such a vacuum of understanding. She needs prayers. Lots of prayers and love. And so do all of the women out there who are struggling and praying for babies while others are throwing them away, and for all of us who have suffered through multiple miscarriages and still remember and miss our lost children, while others…well…it’s unthinkable.

I hope the story is a hoax. I’m holding out for it.

Related: The Democrats don’t want to official commend the pope. He’s you know, pro-life.