Update: Kathryn Joyce emailed me this and confirmed my suspicions. Now onto a favorite right wing strategy of arguing—don’t admit you were wrong in the first place, but just move the goal posts. I’m sure they’ll start saying she was a bad person to do this, instead of realizing that she totally pwned their paranoid asses.
A ton of people have been emailing me this story about a woman who supposedly self-aborted a number of embryos and kept them as an art project. Conservatives like Drudge have been going nuts, but if they gave it one moment’s thought, they’d realize that this story is so not true. I’ll give you a hint why:
If self-aborting were safe, easy, and relatively painless, that object above would not be an emblem of the pro-choice movement. We pretty much wouldn’t need the right to medical abortion if it were that easy. But simple self-abortions is what this art project would need to exist.
Lindsay has a more in-depth analysis.
50 Responses to “There’s no way this is real”
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Yale has apparently issued a statement saying it was a performance art piece, and that it was, in fact, a hoax.
totally in agreement. why would we have needed roe v wade if could have just skipped to the local health food store for the fix? Also, not necessarily that easy to keep getting pregnant..
BTW Yale U website now saying this was performance art and she was never pregnant.
Whatever it was, it was stupid, and self-indulgent IMHO
When I first read this all I could think was HOAX! I mean really, if there were cheap, effective, legal herbal aboritficants that were readily available, there would be a lot less worry on the pro-choice side about Roe v. Wade, and a whole boatload of people on the anti-choice side trying to make whatever “herbs” that work illegal. I mean marijuana is a naturally growing, organic plant and it’s illegal, So why not regulate the herb. Plus, if abortion were easy to do without going to a doctor, why would women willingly pay a couple of hundred dollars for the joy of an operation? I suspect this “artist” is sadly in need of attention or a right-to-lifer trying to stir things up.
I like to think she’s pro-choice and was exposing the anti-choice movement as the paranoid, brainless morons they are. No wonder they empathize with brainless embryos so much. Those are the only humans that get them, man.
I admit I kind of fell for it, and my usual kneejerk reaction to anyone telling me something south (credibility-wise) of “human beings wear pants” is to call bunk.
That it managed to hoodwink a lot of people shows how much people don’t get about biology, I guess.
yep, it’s a hoax
http://www.yale.edu/opa/
I saw a guro manga like that art project.
In it, the women arranged the feti like bonsai and wore them on their heads.
Art imitates cartoons?
I completely believed that she was having unprotected sex, inducing menstruation and calling it a miscarriage. If she had actually been doing that it was, I figured, statistically likely tht she managed to miscarry at least once. I found it both incredibly disheartening and a wee bit hilarious that people claiming to be pro-choice on Salon were so quick to call her a murderer.
Now onto a favorite right wing strategy of arguing—don’t admit you were wrong in the first place, but just move the goal posts.
Since it has been exposed as a hoax, I’ve seen commentators on various sites arguing that the hoax explanation is a cover up. Seriously.
The stupidity of anti-choicers rarely surprises me.
Even better, Bea. Even better.
The stupidity of anti-choicers rarely surprises me.
It’s not so much stupidity, as they desperately want it to be true. This is a “story” that confirms that their world view is the AWESOMEST. It’s what they ever thought of liberal elitists and feminist women, with some gratuitous hippie elements thrown in (an art piece, herbal abortion). They don’t care whether it’s biologically possible or not.
The unfortunate thing, I think, will be that this will never die. Like with most anti-choice propaganda, it will be brought up time and time again, even though it’s been debunked. I suppose, given enough time, it’ll appear with a detail or two changed, and it has to be true, my cousin’s best friend’s roommate knew the girl (/snark).
So, ah, anybody here know where a guy could get in on a little abortion-party action?…
i admit, i thought it was possible for a few minutes–i’m not an expert, but i have heard accounts of some various herbs and things you can buy at a local health foods store that are effective in inducing miscarriage. i’ve known some people who’ve claimed to use this stuff successfully, so i gave it some credence.
Heh. Isn’t it insane how, when soldiers report on atrocities being committed in Iraq, the right-wingnuts go batshit crazy trying to discredit them, but when something as outré and obviously made-up as this comes along, they go batshit crazy calling the woman responsible a murdering Jewess?
If this somehow was possible, who cares how many times she would’ve aborted? Fetuses aren’t people. Pro-choice means pro-choice no matter what.
Update: Kathryn Joyce emailed me this and confirmed my suspicions. Now onto a favorite right wing strategy of arguing—don’t admit you were wrong in the first place, but just move the goal posts. I’m sure they’ll start saying she was a bad person to do this, instead of realizing that she totally pwned their paranoid asses.
Bringing logic and reason into a political fight it like brining a knife to a bazooka fight.
I mean — you didn’t see anyone poring over the typography with a magnifying glass trying to discredit it before running with it, did you?
Anybody who has EVER had an early miscarriage or an abortion would KNOW that this is 100% Grade A Prime BULLSHIT! The hormonal swings and bleeding and fatigue of repeat interruptions alone would be utterly brutal and the recovery is not that swift.
Of course, those who complain loudest have never even been in the position to become pregnant, let alone lose or dispatch that embryo. Says a lot about the paranoia and ignorance and patriarchal nature of the “pro life” movement, don’t it?
In the end, I’m glad it’s a ‘hoax’, but I have to say, from an art criticism point of view, I think it’s a very interesting hoax.
I especially think it’s funny that my very first thoughts about this (even as a feminist) were to medicalize the situation, and to question her choices. Is that safe? Is she ruining her future fertility? How dare she run roughshod over her own body like that!
Whereas the male-dominated world has myriad ways for men to endanger themselves, and we applaud this — it’s called “athleticism” or “adventure”. Not to mention of course that we have no problem with women doing potentially dangerous things when it might make them prettier or enable men to enjoy them more.
Sure, inject botulism into your face so you will be more decorative, but don’t have an abortion for the sake of serious art!
“Sure, inject botulism into your face so you will be more decorative, but don’t have an abortion for the sake of serious art!”
Self-aborting with no follow-up care via an “herbal mixture” is kind of like the abortion equivalent of letting someone who failed out of Phlebotomy 101 inject industrial silicone directly into your breasts because you want a boob job.
Having multiple surgical or medically-supervised chemical abortions in nine months seems deeply unwise from a personal health standpoint, especially given the numerous alternatives to getting pregnant in the first place. Inducing the same number of abortions in the same amount of time by way of a home remedy and then not getting checked out afterwards seems almost suicidal.
Though yes, what we as a society will refuse to bat an eye at so long as it’s a woman pursuing greater aesthetic appeal is truly fucked.
Sure, inject botulism into your face so you will be more decorative, but don’t have an abortion for the sake of serious art!
Botox make the people who use them look like robots, but it always bothered me when people would bring up the fact that it’s made of botulism. We are human beings; we take dangerous, evil things and grab them by the neck, smack it around and manipulate it until we make it feed our trivial, petty desires. That’s why we were put on this earth.
Um, how exactly do they think she would have managed to find those embryos in the first place? They’re only a cluster of cells, so it’s not not as though they are easy to spot. Do they think she examined all of the fluids and such with a microscope?
“Um, how exactly do they think she would have managed to find those embryos in the first place? They’re only a cluster of cells, so it’s not not as though they are easy to spot. Do they think she examined all of the fluids and such with a microscope?”
I imagine they think she just went through the blood with a magnifying glass until she found a teeny tiny baby. Human reproductive biology is usually not anti-choicers’ strong suit.
Perhaps I’m a caricature of a leftist wackjob, but I’m frankly more bothered about the fact that (IMO) this is just plain bad art than I am about teh baybeez. Having it be a fake that triggers hysterical reactions on the part of the fetus people is redeeming up to a point, but even then it’s more or less meh to me.
Abusing your body is no biggie as far as I’m concerned. Over Easter there were news reports of a guy in the Philippines who had himself crucified for the 22nd time as part of the festivities. I’m all in favor of his right to do that, just as I’m in favor of the right of a woman to get herself knocked up and have an abortion for the sake of art, or just to see what it feels like.
There are herbs that can be used to induce an abortion/miscarriage. When I was in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, this was the most common way to have an abortion in the rural areas, though it always was referred to euphemistically as seeking treatment for “delayed menstruation.” But it’s pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t, but the women end up giving birth to premature babies with severe birth defects. Other times, the miscarriage is incomplete and the women bleed and bleed and bleed, sometimes even to death.
All of which is to say that the notion that she had eight or nine herbal abortions is pretty unlikely, even though herbal abortions are possible.
Perhaps I’m a caricature of a leftist wackjob, but I’m frankly more bothered about the fact that (IMO) this is just plain bad art than I am about teh baybeez. Having it be a fake that triggers hysterical reactions on the part of the fetus people is redeeming up to a point, but even then it’s more or less meh to me.
It kind of reminds me of Piss Christ; a silly attempt at “art” which is more about the shallow, meaningless attention grabbing then any kind of message.
Admittedly, as a philosophical libertarian, I believe that all art is created for selfish and self-motivated reasons, but in this case there are no tangible side benefits.
Mostly I just don’t get it as art–it reminds me of the moon-goddess “woo” stuff Amanda was talking about the other day, like the people who make art out of menstrual blood. I don’t really get why anyone would do it, from the art POV, though I’m glad to be enlightened.
As far as the hoax goes, though–I tend to agree with the person who wondered if the performance art was this being leaked to the media. Sadly, yes, this is going to get passed down in forwarded emails for years, and we will find ourselves rolling our eyes and pointing our relatives in the direction of Snopes. So in that respect I wish the artist hadn’t done it–it’s going to make more work for pro-choicers, and it probably isn’t going to spark much dialogue between people on opposite sides of the debate.
That said, it’s her art project, and her body, and if she wanted to do something this dumb, who am I to stop her. If she were my friend, though, I’d probably try to talk her out of it on the above grounds (bad art, bad medicine, and bad politics).
buh-wha: I found it both incredibly disheartening and a wee bit hilarious that people claiming to be pro-choice on Salon were so quick to call her a murderer.
So this seems to have been a very efficient piece of performance art, when it could force so many people to confront cracks then their beliefs and assumptions so quickly…
As much as performance art kinda irritates me*, it is certainly a valid form of public discourse. inge is 100% correct.
*just bc i’m a complete and total introverte and any type of public display makes me cringe.
Very obvious that the conservatives don’t give a damn about women, especially given the fact that they made up a puff piece that was exposed by the NY Sun columnist.
How dare she! Everyone knows that only pro-lifers are entitled to objectify and fetishize fetuses!
As much as performance art kinda irritates me*, it is certainly a valid form of public discourse. inge is 100% correct.
“Valid form of public discourse,” sure. Good art? Not so much. A little too reminiscent of the old “tampon in a teacup” art-school ploy.
And, frankly, not even that original an idea, and the first thing that sprang to mind when the story first came out (and was not yet revealed to be a hoax).
So this seems to have been a very efficient piece of performance art, when it could force so many people to confront cracks then their beliefs and assumptions so quickly…
Because I’ve had to endure a crash course in biology over the last year, I didn’t really believe this story even when it first broke, If pregnancy and miscarriage were so easy to pull off that someone could do either “as often as possible” – through artificial insemination, for pregnancy, and herbs for abortion – the IVF and birth control debates would look a lot different.
I found the fark thread fascinating – especially at the point when posters started realizing this was a hoax. Some of them – those who were originally pissed by the callous nature of the artist’s piece – were even angrier when they realized it was a put-on.
I found myself wondering: why weren’t more people simply relieved to find this was a hoax?
Her explanation of it is published in the Yale Daily News this morning:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24559
/snipThere are herbs that can be used to induce an abortion/miscarriage. When I was in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, this was the most common way to have an abortion in the rural areas, though it always was referred to euphemistically as seeking treatment for “delayed menstruation.” But it’s pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t, but the women end up giving birth to premature babies with severe birth defects. Other times, the miscarriage is incomplete and the women bleed and bleed and bleed, sometimes even to death./endsnip
As a certified herbalist who believes there is a time and a place for surgery and drugs, I often get asked about herbs to induce abortions. My answer, “yes, there are herbs that would be considered abortificants, HOWEVER, the best results happen when these herbs are used right after unprotected sex, more to bring on menstruation than to “abort”. Here is the number for your local feminist woman’s clinic/planned parenthood. Call them before you go tramping through the woods looking for pennyroyal or jamming parsley up against your cervix.
No, herbs have no place replacing good sound evidence-based medical and surigical procedures for abortions.
Ah, art-school jargon. How I have not missed it.
Huh. It almost sounds like she’s trying to say something like, “If we make abortions illegal, are we going to start arresting every woman who menstruates, because hey, it could be a miscarriage and maybe she did something to cause it?” Which is certainly a familiar argument. The art-school jargon, though–whoo.
Also, elsewhere on the ‘tubes, I’m running into people who’ve recently gone through traumatic miscarriages, and, while they are definitely pro-choice, are highly personally disturbed by this piece of art, and think that the artist might have had second thoughts if she’d realized that it might trigger people who’d had miscarriages (especially since she used the word “miscarriage”, not the more accurate “abortion”). Or perhaps not–she doesn’t seem a very shy and retiring sort of person, from the small glimpse of her we get in the art project.
I think the art project was leaking the story. For that, she gets an A+ in my book, because she got it on Drudge immediately. She front-loaded it with every hot button that makes right wingers nuts: women’s sexual liberation, women’s education, the right of single women to a private life, and women’s general ickiness. It did immediately expose the fact that right wingers care more about the fates of a half dozen imaginary zygotes than the lives of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis.
Now, will most people get it? Probably not. Most people share the same hot buttons, even if they suppress them, that make anti-choice politics salient nowadays. People’s reactions are really funny to me, and I suspect that was the point of the hoax, but unfortunately, most of society is still stuck in the delusion that we should maintain a second class citizen status for women and won’t get why this upsetting them is so revealing and funny.
I found myself wondering: why weren’t more people simply relieved to find this was a hoax?
If concern for “life” was what pissed them off, yes.
If anger at feminism and hostility to women’s liberation is why you’re mad, no, that’s going to piss you off even more, because some lowly woman got one over on you.
I suspect the first group is an empty set.
Mnem, jargon translated: The difference between miscarrying and menstruating is biologically minimal, and only is meaningful because society invests meaning in the act of impregnating a woman. In fact, you could argue that impregnating a woman is considered more meaningful than giving birth, which of course is because we live in a world where men are supposed to have control of everything important. Legalizing abortion was a social act that suggested that the act of going through with a pregnancy and birth was more important than ejaculating into a woman, and that women should get the credit for making babies more than men.
Legalizing abortion was a conceptual death blow to patriarchy, which is of course, why it’s the major point of struggle in the culture wars, though gay marriage, which drains “traditional” marriage of its patriarchal meaning (that men own women) is quickly catching on it.
People think the central question in the abortion debate is “when” life begins, but that’s a red herring. More important and direct is the question of who we assign the power to start life—the man? Or the woman? Pro-choicers say women create life through the process of pregnancy. Anti-choicers say men create life through the process of ejaculation.
Mnem, jargon translated
Oh, I understood the jargon. I just think you’re giving her way, way too much credit for deep thought and political awareness.
But, then, I come from the artistic tradition that says, “If you want to send a message, use Western Union,” so I don’t have a lot of patience for performance art.
I love arty farty stuff. I think a lot of profound concepts are so simple on their surface, people don’t spend time really thinking about them, and art can give you that opportunity.
And dismissing artists as stupid is an old trick, and one that artists kind of play into, because they refuse to explain themselves straightforwardly, because they want you to engage with the art. I suspect that she’s actually quite aware of what she’s doing. The anti-choice nuts were swapping a video around of her talking about patriarchal heteronormativity, and the implication of course was, “Teach women to read and look what happens,” but it did demonstrate that she’s not a dumb fuck who got lucky, but someone who understands the unspoken conceptual disagreements in the debate and who decided to expose them.
Performance art that I get. That’s a unique experience.
I have to admit that I didn’t think this through enough to get the angle of “if you could do it yourself, why aren’t people doing it themselves?”. That being said, as a piece of art, while I am a little taken back by it, I have to admit that it is an effective, and therefore succesful piece. It’s shocking, yes, but it’s also achieving it’s goal of sparking discussion, good or bad. Dismissing the artist is foolish (as I said in the last sentance, she was succesful in her goal, how can we dismiss that?), and fanning your face and claiming the concept gives you the vapors? Please. Movies, torture porn, books, video games media in general has just as many shocking visuals and concepts as this piece, get over the artist, and lets discuss the issue as intended.
Are you sure you want to put your words into her mouth? She’s about the worst advocate for any viewpoint imaginable, and a lot of pro-choice advocates are not pleased about this at all.
I fully agree that the “life begins at conception” argument is factually stupid, and the continuation of this myth is hampering medical research that could cure Alzheimer’s and other diseases, as well as dramatically and unnecessarily increasing the cost of fertility treatments because unused embryos have to be preserved indefinitely instead of discarded.
It is a biological fact that fertilized eggs routinely fail to attach to the uterus, and are discharged in what appears to be a normal menstruation at an early stage of embryonic development.
However, my understanding is that later in the pregnancy, miscarriage is physically and emotionally traumatic, and the suffering of women who lose pregnancies that they are trying to take to term shouldn’t be discounted.
Anyway, Shvartz makes none of these points, and that’s part of the reason her art is so bad. I don’t think projecting video of herself menstruating onto a surface smeared with blood makes any salient point whatsoever about abortion, gay marriage, feminism or anything else, and I think people who are trying to advance their positions on those issues gain rather minimal benefit from Shvartz’s assistance.
By the way, why is legalized abortion the liberating achievement rather than the invention of the birth control pill?
Mitchforth: Anyway, Shvartz makes none of these points, and that’s part of the reason her art is so bad.
Me: No the whole point is that new ideas will be conceived in the viewer’s mind. It’s not the artist’s job to spell it out for you.
I think she should be arrested, but for CRIMES AGAINST THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.. Jesus Christos, that art school cant is the very definition of obfuscatory.
sixtiesliberal, quoting: In a sense, the act of conception occurs when the viewer assigns the term “miscarriage” or “period” to that blood.
Schroedinger’s embryo.
Unfortunately, this just feeds into the meme of modern artists as being self-obsessed wanker bullshit creeps.
Yeah, it “got people talking.” Big deal. The fact that this little performance-art trick is going to be taken up into the meme of Reality ™ for the anti-choice wingnuts and get endlessly recycled and thrown back in our faces as “something that really happened!” doesn’t seem to have crossed her tiny little brain. Or maybe it did, and she’s an anti-choicer deliberately trying to produce so-called “evidence” that they can quote in fund-raising literature down the road.
In which case this is nothing more than the deliberate manufacturing of something equivalent to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and should be denounced.
Frankly, based on that art-diatribe pseudo-Foucaulting bilge in her so-called statement, I’m more likely to write her off as a clueless idiot.