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(UPDATED below) Who, in good conscience, could support an exhibition of "art" so horrific as this? Yale University, that's who. This isn't art. It's an abomination.

A senior art major at Yale will display blood samples from her multiple abortions brought on after artificially inseminating herself in an upcoming art show sponsored by the university.

An article by the Yale Daily News about her work begins, “Aliza hvarts ’08 wants to make a statement.”

According to the piece, “The display of Schvarts’ project will feature a large cube suspended from the ceiling of a room in the gallery of Green Hall. Shvarts 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.”

The story is almost too outlandish to be true. "I hope it inspires some sort of discourse," Shvarts told the Yale Daily News. "Sure, some people will be upset with the message and will not agree with it, but it's not the intention of the piece to scandalize anyone." Is she really so naive as to think that purposely impregnating herself simply to abort would not be scandalous? Does she think those of us outside the ivory tower are too blinkered and benighted to appreciate her work?

Or is it all a big joke?

Out of curiousity, do pro-choicers think this stunt helps or hurts their cause? Who -- other than a handful of morally adrift academics and students -- thinks Shvarts' project is anything but a provocation rather than an invitation to "discourse"?

UPDATE: Allah at HotAir shares my skepticism. "It’s too broadly parodic of too many things: the trivialization of abortion, modern art’s fascination with effluvium, amoral academic culture justified as a form of faux-profound 'consciousness-raising,' etc etc etc. All that’s missing is some sort of representation of Christ as a gay Nazi." The commenters think the whole thing must be a hoax, too. So does Yuval Levin over at the Corner. "If it’s a hoax, it’s an abhorrent and disgusting one. If it turns out to be true, it’s of course all the more so and far worse. Either way, where are the adults at Yale?" Exactly.

And American Digest has a video of Shvarts railing (predictably... and tediously) against the "patriarchial heteronormative."

UPDATE 2: The intrepid reporters at Newsbusters say the whole thing is "a scam.""It's also proof," writes Warner Todd Hudson, "that our sources of news rarely if ever employ any common sense in how they write up the news. A tiny bit of logic put to this story of 'self-induced miscarriages' would reveal it to be all stuff and nonsense. But, no, what we get instead is the story reported as if it is fact and not the cynical efforts of a kid that just wants her 15 minutes of fame."

Ann Althouse adds: "Maybe this is so obviously hoaxy that we're chumps to give the young woman all this attention." Maybe.

UPDATE 3: 99.94 percent certainly a hoax. Or, in the words of the Yale flack, "performance art." (Thanks for the tip, J.D.)