Wanna Bet?

The Yale Daily News is reporting:

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 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.

But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."

Take a deep breath . . . listen carefully: It's not true.

No, we have no inside information. We're neither doctors, nor do we play cave men on TV. It's just that, over the years, we've accumulated some knowledge respecting artists, girls, undergraduates, and lunatics. At the end of the day, we'll learn that this young woman's real performance-art project was to convince as many rubes as possible that anyone -- however committed a feminist Democrat or other psychotic they might be -- would actually do such a thing.

Didn't happen. Trust us.

[UPDATE - 8:15 p.m.] The Office of Public Affairs of Yale University has issued THIS statement:

Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. 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.

She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.

Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.

So keep paying attention.