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But Yet Still I Cry...
#97 - 0--spud--But Yet Still I Cry...--2008-04-24 06:06:51
#As I write today's article, I sit here with tears streaming down my
cheeks, my heart breaking into a million fragments. My thoughts are
short-circuiting. I am having difficulty comprehending. I thought I
had seen and heard it all. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. My hands shake
as my fingers search for the right letters in order to string together
the words that my heart is desperately trying to form...While reclining on my couch in my apartment and reading my favorite columnists as I do several nights a week, I was excited to see that
Jill Stanek had written an article this week for
World Daily Net.
I really enjoy reading her work even though it is usually about a
difficult subject - abortion. Her title struck me as odd, and if true,
disturbing, but I thought that perhaps it was a descriptive technique
and continued on. Jill continued with her article which led her to
share a story about another video on youtube - although this one was
about abortion. I thought "how sad" and continued reading. Jill suddenly changed direction when she wrote,
"One person getting way more negative attention than she expected was Yale art student Aliza Shvarts."
I
remember thinking "art, this should be good. I like art." Then Jill
revealed the rest of the story, which was about a Yale Art student's
art project and I gasped and then found myself shaking and sobbing.
Here is a summary of the story from the
Drudge Report.
"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.... [S]tudents on
both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock - saying the
project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize
abortion.... Shvarts... said she was not concerned about any
medical effects the forced miscarriages may have had on her body. The
abortifacient drugs she took were legal and herbal, she said, and she
did not feel the need to consult a doctor about her repeated
miscarriages....
The
display of Schvarts' project will feature a large cube suspended from
the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Schvarts will wrap
hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting around this cube; lined between
layers of the sheeting will be the blood from Schvarts' self-induced
miscarriages mixed with Vaseline in order to prevent the blood from
drying and to extend the blood throughout the plastic sheeting. Schvarts
will then project recorded videos onto the four sides of the cube.
These videos, captured on a VHS camcorder, will show her experiencing
miscarriages in her bathrooom tub, she said. Similar videos will be
projected onto the walls of the room...."
Some
people who know me personally may be thinking that I am broken because
I had an abortion in my twenties. Something I know God has forgiven me
for, but a decision that I deeply regret. They would be wrong. I am
breaking for America... I am crying for the country I love. Where did
her moral compass go? Where did her love and compassion disappear to?
What happened to the America that opened her arms wide to all people?
When did America become so disconnected and empty that one of its
children could put herself through repeated miscarriages to create an
artwork that depicted the process on a canvas for the world to see?
When did America become so numb that it no longer feels the pain of the
aborted, and in this case, the deliberately miscarried? When did we
become so lost as a nation?
I cry for America because
sometimes I no longer know her. She has, at times, become something
that I don't understand, that I never dreamed she could ever become. I
cry for Aliza Shvarts who thinks her art project is "normal." I cry because of the deception so many women have embraced, myself included.
It took me a good ten minutes before I could return to Jill's article. She went to on to write,
Thankfully,
the world was appalled. Yale administrators interviewed Shvarts and
said she told them her serial abortions were all a hoax. Shvarts then
publicly refuted the Yale administration, who then said Svarts saying
it wasn't a hoax when it really was a hoax was part of the project. At
press time the two were in a stalemate. Yale said it would not allow Shvarts to show her art unless she admitted she lied.
The Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale commented on the situation only after an uproar ensued saying,
Although
we stand by the right to reproductive freedom, we cannot approve of her
approach and presentation. The facts concerning the controversy remain
unclear, but the consequences are very real and must be addressed. Like
most who have heard of these events, we are shocked by the content of
the art piece in question and the manner in which very serious aspects
of reproductive rights have been treated. …
In Mike Huckabee's book,
Kids Who Kill , when writing about depersonalization in his chapter,
How Killing Becomes Acceptable, he says,"According
to many criminal investigators, the first and most important factor in
stripping away inhibitions against murder is the mind-set of
depersonalizing the victim. A killer needs to psychologically distance
himself from his target's humanity. He needs to justify his actions by
redefining his prey as a mere "thing."
Huckabee further elaborates when he quotes Lt. Col. Dave Grossman from his book,
On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, saying,
In
World War II, only 15-20 percent of combat infantry were willing to
fire their rifles; in Korea, about 50 percent were; in Vietnam, the
figure rose to over 90 percent." What made the difference? Training.
Military strategists discovered ways to condition soldiers to overcome
their powerful, innate human resistance to killing. [....]
According to Lt. Col Grossman, the same dynamic is at work in society
at large. Our natural inhibitions against murder are strong. Without
careful conditioning, most people are simply incapable of killing
another human being. They have a natural psychological resistance to
murder. To pull the trigger, lunge with the knife, or swing the
bludgeon, they must first systematically desensitize their innate sense
of the sanctity of another's life."
If I have
not been wholly and utterly convinced before that we need to take a
stand and demand change, I am now. How much further are we willing to
allow America to fall before we reach out our hands and right her?
How much longer are we willing to to sit by and watch these type of
situations transpire before we are compelled to respond?Abraham Lincoln said long ago when he was struggling with the issue of slavery,
"I
should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence,
which declares that all men are equal upon principle, and making
exceptions to it, where it will stop. If one man says it does mean a
Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man (child)" (Kids, 44).
Tonight
I cry. For me. For you. For our children. For women. For
Americans. For the America I love with my heart and soul. I cry
because I see we have lost our way and I do not know if we can find our
way home. I
pray we can. I hope we can. I choose to believe we can. But yet, still I cry.
Dominique Oberling
http://anunlikelyperspective2.squarespace.com
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