Yale University senior art major Aliza Shvarts has caused an uproar at Yale and on online media outlets across the globe after The Yale Daily News (YDN) reported Thursday that Shvarts’ senior art project involved her impregnating herself and inducing abortions “as often as possible” during a nine-month process.

Though Yale University spokeswoman Helaine Klasky released a statement later that day calling Shvarts’ project a “creative fiction,” Shvarts disputed the statement in an updated story on the YDN website Thursday night, labeling Klasky’s statement “ultimately inaccurate.”

Shvarts told the YDN Thursday night that during a nine-month period, she used a needleless syringe to insert semen into herself. At the end of each month, she took abortifacient herbs to induce bleeding, though it is unclear whether the bleeding was from an actual miscarriage.

To back up her claims, Shvarts showed the YDN clips of the footage that will be shown as part of her project.

“The tapes depict Shvarts — sometimes naked, sometimes clothed — alone in a shower stall bleeding into a cup,” the YDN reported.

Shvarts is defending the project as real, though she is not sure whether she was ever pregnant.

“No one can say with 100-percent certainty that anything in the piece did or did not happen,” Shvarts told the YDN, “because the nature of the piece is that it did not consist of certainties.” …