Aliza Shvarts Creates Abortion Art and a Controversy

Aliza Shvarts Creates Abortion Art and a Controversy-The definition of what constitutes "art" keeps being pushed into regions of absurdity and grossness. No greater example of such exist than an art project by a Yale student named Aliza Shvarts who documented how she artificially inseminated herself and then used abortifacient drugs to end her pregnancy.

The documentary video of how she got pregnant and then got an abortion several times, as well as preserved samples of her own blood, constitutes Aliza Shvarts' senior art project. Ms. Shvarts has managed to bring both sides of the abortion debate together, in a perverse way. Pro life people are outraged because Shvarts casually gave herself abortions to further her "art." Pro choice people are outraged because they feel she is trivializing an important issue and making the hard choice some women face with an unwanted pregnancy into something absurd.

Aliza Shvarts claims that she was not going for shock value, but rather wanted to make a statement about the relationship of the human body and art. One might suggest that Michelangelo did just that five centuries ago when he painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with far more uplifting results.

Aliza Shvarts' "abortion art" is just the latest cause célèbre or outrage (depending on one's point of view) that has made many people wonder what the art world is up to.

The most famous modern art scandal was created by the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when he displayed a series of graphic, homoerotic photos that included one work displaying the use of a bull whip as a sexual aid. The outrage by some was compounded by the fact that the exhibit was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, which displayed the exhibit, was unsuccessfully prosecuted for pandering obscenity.

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Aliza Shvarts Creates Abortion Art and a Controversy