Abortion Art and Moloch

(Content warning: graphic language)

Some have been following this story about Yale University senior art major Aliza Shvarts, and her repeated self-induced miscarriages.

Here we see what other ages would call witchcraft; others would deem paganism. Both are accurate. Her own words show one who thinks that the individual consciousness is the highest authority in defining and setting the terms of discourse:

Just as it is a myth that women are .meant. to be feminine and men masculine, that penises and vaginas are .meant. for penetrative heterosexual sex (or that mouths, anuses, breasts, feet or leather, silicone, vinyl, rubber, or metal implements are not .meant. for sex at all), it is a myth that ovaries and a uterus are .meant. to birth a child.

When considering my own bodily form, I recognize its potential as extending beyond its ability to participate in a normative function. While my organs are capable of engaging with the narrative of reproduction . the time-based linkage of discrete events from conception to birth . the realm of capability extends beyond the bounds of that specific narrative chain. These organs can do other things, can have other purposes, and it is the prerogative of every individual to acknowledge and explore this wide realm of capability.

Her statement is indicative of the manner in which mimetic theory predicts accurately that the human default attitude and behavior is sacrificial paganism; what René Girard coined as "the primitive Sacred." We feel ourselves in utter freedom, yet we return to the "high places" of the fertility cults, Mount Cythaeron of the Bacchae, the Astarte sacred poles, and the flames of Moloch. (More curiously, a major self-proclaimed monotheist religion claims no paganism, yet practices human sacrifice as a virtue in its most fervently "devout" followers in the name of "Allah".)

And so, we see that paganism in its multifarious forms is a huge and real presence is the opening years of the twenty-first century, whether in the shape of a Scimitar, or in performance "art". Those who fall away from the grace of God do so in high predictable gradients of various "fruits of the flesh," as Saint Paul called them in the Letter to the Galatians, leading finally to the place of sacrifice (Gr. thumos).

But those who cringe, calling Ms. Shvarts "sick" should ask: what is the qualitative difference between her self-conscious "art" and the abortion industry that carries out the same weird alchemical machinations day in and day out?