To the Editor:

Aliza Shvarts’ actions are repellent on every level:

Physical: Obviously, one of the more viscerally disgusting things ever. She might as well have repeatedly induced tumor growth and received chemotherapy. It could be no more insulting.

Intellectual: An egregious negligence of advisorial responsibility. [Adviser] Pia Lindman should be fired, not only for approving a project that endangers her student’s health, but also for damaging Yale’s reputation as an institution of intellectual and moral integrity.

Political: Timing couldn’t be worse (hotly contested political campaign, the visit of the pope). I cannot imagine a situation in which this does not get included in the historical context of the continued erosion of the right to choose. The “dialogue” she precipitates will certainly not be about “the relationship of art to the human body,” and the results will be damaging to every woman in this country. I defend her right, as I defend the right to free, if hateful, speech. However, the precariousness of right to choose means that by “exercising” hers, she risks everyone’s. The only political logic I can divine for this would be if she were a kamikaze pro-lifer. If that’s the case, she couldn’t have done a better job.

Moral: Congratulations, Aliza: you have single-handedly trivialized not only an entire generation and a half’s fight to gain and retain the right to choose, through harassment and against odds, but also a history of women’s struggles with the emotional, moral and spiritual impacts of the choice to terminate a pregnancy. You spit upon every couple who have tried and repeatedly failed to conceive. It is the emotional impact of these struggles, emotional impact that you brazenly exploit, NOT explore, in your misguided swing at the avant-garde, that informs my disgust at every level.

Shame on you.

Molly Clark-Barol

April 17

The writer is a senior in Saybrook College.