A update to yesterday's disturbing news item

Yale calls it a hoax. If you read the underlying Yale Daily News article, though, the school's position seems to be that because she didn't know that she was pregnant, they weren't miscarriages or abortions and that therefore the whole thing is false. This seems inaccurate to me, if for no other reason than because she also didn't know that she wasn't pregnant, so at most the truth or falsehood of calling it miscarriage or abortion is uncertain, which, according to her statements, was one of her myriad not-exactly-well-made points.

The school claims it wouldn't have sanctioned a project like the one she is claiming to have had its consent in undertaking and that the whole thing is in actuality a piece of performance art. The student denies that account wholesale. I would think, from having to get approval for my own thesis at a similar school (a thesis which was, in fact, rejected by the ethics board, until I wrote them a letter explaining, in a semi-polite way, that they were being obtuse), that there would be some record of what it was she proposed.

Ultimately, everything about the whole affair leaves me feeling upset and unsettled. I was surprised (or maybe not so surprised) to find myself agreeing with both the pro-life and pro-choice commentators to the Yahoo article -- the woman is callous and the project offensive. And I am disturbed by the whole thing.