Fetuses always show up in the most unlikely places. As long as no one else takes this seriously, neither will I. Though I’ve always been a fan of dead baby jokes, this one crosses the line. I meant it when I say this is no laughing matter. I don’t monkey around about fetuses. Yale student Aliza Schvartz’s art display chronicles a series of her own artificial inseminations followed by self-induced miscarriages as part of her senior art project, according to the Yale Daily News. The purpose was to inspire discourse and provoke inquiry, according to the student. “I believe strongly that art should be a medium for politics and ideologies, not just a commodity,” she said to the Yale Daily News. The exhibition will include blood from the student’s “self-induced miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from drying” and recorded videos of the student “experiencing miscarriages in her bathroom tub,” according to the Yale Daily News. Sin much? This is vaguely reminiscent of the “Piss Christ” controversy, which was artist Andres Serrano’s exhibition that featured a crucifix immersed in a bottle of his own urine. I’ll give it to her – she’s progressive, if anything. She’s the best the free-thinking Ivy League institutions have to offer. This brings a whole new meaning to the term “body art” or the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Let’s have a moment of silence for those bad jokes. And another for the fetuses. But seriously, I wish she had a gallery of this garbage. I’d have more material to work with at the opinion section’s weekly budget meetings. Schvartz didn’t confirm the number of sperm donors or the number of inseminations she went through. Have some sympathy for this poor freak, you godless heathens. Rather than waste a perfectly good fetus, she did the morally superior thing by using it to pass an art class. To understand a fetus, one must think like a fetus. Those on the left might assume those fetuses were asking for it – sitting there all innocent and unborn. So long as there is a market for them, there will always be fetuses for hire. But some won’t blame the fetuses. The dead babies are not the ones taking poetic license a bit too far. The abortion rights crowd is just as responsible for this as Schvartz. This is what the abortion debate has been reduced to. She treated the privilege of pregnancy as nothing more than a vaginal discharge. She calls her work “art” – and by today’s standards, who on the left can disagree with her? I mean, it’s not like she’s aborting an actual person. It’s just a fetus. You don’t have to agree with me. I’m Catholic – I’m infallible just because. And as a Catholic, I can’t support abortion. But as a realist, abortion makes sense. It’s unpatriotic to force incapable parents to raise unwanted children. The focal point of this debate is misguided. It always has been. We should target solutions to the current problem, not create a constitutional amendment banning abortion that would never hold up with the populace or the court system. This problem is a lack of education and good decision making. Sex education doesn’t need to be increased or instituted at a younger age; instead, it should be expanded to include topics such as safe sex, contraception and restructuring domestic roles to encourage abstinence and prudence. Not to mention the decline in national crime rates, which was recently attributed to the decision in Roe v. Wade, documented in “Freakonomics” by economist Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. Unwanted children are usually the people most likely to contribute to America’s criminal statistics. So, in essence, abortion is a major crime deterrent. Besides, the only people getting abortions are liberals. So why shouldn’t conservatives endorse this kind of thing? Well, because it’s murder. And if it’s not, no abortion advocate should be even mildly upset, let alone appalled, by this story. I guess it would be kind of useless for me to use this as an opportunity to call out abortion advocates – to tell them they’re immoral or try to convince them that the grass is greener on the anti-abortion side. After a story like this, I guess it would be equally useless to call out people who continue to look down on pregnant girls who look too young to be full-time moms. Maybe we should thank Yale for sending the devil to do God’s work. I’d give her an “A.” I would, because this debate has much more room to grow, no pun intended. And that could be exactly what the country needs to open up an honest conversation about the right to and sanctity of life. Besides, it was all a big joke anyway.
—-Contact Daniel Lumetta at [email protected]