Yale art student stirs abortion controversy

Aliza Shvarts, a senior art major at Yale, provoked strong reactions last week after the Yale Daily News broke this story:

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 goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts’ project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock — saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.

There seems to be some confusion about the facts. In a statement issued on Friday, Yale spokesperson Helaine Klasky said that Ms. Shvarts had twice assured university officials that she had not impregnanted herself or induced miscarriages. But the same day, Shvarts began an op-ed in the Yale Daily News with this sentence: “For the past year, I performed repeated self-induced miscarriages.”

Although some scholars defend the project on grounds of intellectual freedom, most people across the political spectrum—in academia and in the broader public sphere—have condemned the project. In particular, Yale officials have distanced themselves from Ms. Shvarts’s project. The Dean of the Yale School of Art, Robert Storr, said, “If I had known about this, I would not have permitted it to go forward.” Peter Salovey, Dean of Yale College, went further: “I am appalled. This piece of performance art as reported in the press bears no relation to what I consider appropriate for an undergraduate senior project. The Dean of the School of Art and I are reassessing what constitutes an appropriate senior art project and the manner in which those projects are mentored.” Indeed, this morning the Yale Daily News reports that Yale has disciplined two faculty members for exercising poor judgment in mentoring the student.

In my view, Ms. Shvarts’s claim that she impregnated herself artificially and induced miscarriages with abortifacient drugs is morally reprehensible—and an abuse of intellectual freedom. The high value that universities place on intellectual freedom does not mean that anything goes. Students and faculty still must exercise that freedom responsibly.

What’s your take?

Update: Yale administrators have indicated in a statement that Ms. Shvarts will not be allowed to exhibit her work unless she admits that it is a work of fiction—specifically, “that she did not try to inseminate herself and induce miscarriages, and that no human blood will be physically displayed in her installation.”

Sexual violence in the Congo

The Greatest SilenceIn class today, we screened the first half hour of The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo, a new documentary that debuted on HBO earlier this week. The film and filmmaker, Lisa Jackson, were also featured in a story on NPR this week, in the Washington Post last week, and in the New York Times last fall before the film was shown at the Sundance festival in January.

It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t watch the full 76 minutes, but I encourage you to catch it on HBO or grab the DVD when it comes out. As I suggested in class, the film is valuable not only because it puts a human face on the suffering and survival of Congolese women but also because it connects us to their story. First, because Jackson weaves in her own story of having experienced gang rape, it allows us to see the common inhumanity of sexual violence across radically different cultural and political contexts. Second, the film draws out the linkages between our society and a forgotten war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As Jackson said in a hearing before the U.S. Senate, referring to foreign extraction of coltan from the DRC, “Everyone in this room should consider the fact that there is the blood of Congolese women on their laptop computers and on their cellphones.”

What are your reactions to this film?

Thinking about sexuality? “Me too.”

In today’s news, the Chronicle of Higher Education writes about a confessional web site started by students at Duke University to dispell the myth of “effortless perfection” at that institution. The blog, “Me Too,” allows students to express their concerns and to hear from other students who may have similar experiences.

Perhaps it’s no surprise—but it’s striking all the same—that a lot of posts relate to sexuality. When I checked this afternoon, more than half of the most recent comments dealt with relationships (1, 2, 3), body image (1, 2), sexual orientation (1, 2, 3, 4), or sexual violence.

Students at any college or university can contribute to the blog, and readers can comment on any existing post. “But,” according to the Chronicle, “the only response allowed is ‘Me too.’”

See the world differently

Worldmapper: HIV PrevalenceA few students have asked for more information about the maps I showed in class to visualize the global distribution of sexually transmitted infections, poverty, and violence. The maps, like this one showing HIV prevalence, come from worldmapper.org, a project of researchers at the University of Sheffield and the University of Michigan. See the full index of available maps here.

You can also read more about the Worldmapper project in a recent article from PLoS Medicine, an open-source, peer-reviewed journal.

Texting for sex(info)

Last week we discussed the state of sexuality education in the U.S. and elsewhere, and we examined some of the evidence that more pragmatic approaches to sex ed are associated with lower rates of unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and sexually transmitted infections. We also saw that most Americans think young teens should have access to reliable information about all aspects of sexuality.

In a related development, last month’s American Journal of Public Health included a brief report about SEXINFO, a sexual health text messaging service developed by Internet Sexuality Information Services, Inc., in partnership with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

The service was developed as a response to rising gonorrhea rates among African American youth in San Francisco. In developing the service, ISIS and the health department sought input from young people ages 15-19 to ensure that it was relevant to the groups they were trying to reach. So far, SEXINFO has exceeded expectations. According to the report in AJPH, there were more than 4,500 inquiries in the first 25 weeks of the service. More than half of those inquiries led to follow-up information and referrals. The top three inquiries, according to the developers, were (1) “what 2 do if ur condom broke,” (2) “2 find out about STDs,” and (3) “if u think ur pregnant.”

The service is currently available only in the San Francisco area, but it wouldn’t be difficult to replicate elsewhere in the U.S. How valuable do you think it would be to have access to such a service where you live? Do you think young people would use it? Why or why not?

Food insecurity, structural violence, and HIV

In class today, I discussed a study published in 2007 on the links between food insufficiency, sexual behavior, and HIV transmission in Botswana and Swaziland. I cited the links between undernutrition, food insecurity, and HIV as an example of how structural violence constrains and influences individual behavior and well being.

If you’d like to learn more about this study, check out this interview with Sheri Weiser, M.D., lead author on the study and assistant adjunct professor of medicine at UC-San Francisco.

How, if at all, does this study—or our discussion in class—change your thinking about the causes of the AIDS epidemic? What other factors do you think need to be addressed? How useful do you find the concept of structural violence for making sense of global inequalities in health?