A public college in Idaho is coming under pressure to explain why it has removed from an upcoming exhibition in its Center for Arts & History several artworks dealing with reproductive health and abortion.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Coalition Against Censorship have jointly written to Lewis-Clark State College expressing “alarm” at the decision to remove several pieces.
Their letter says that the college’s response demonstrated the potential abuses of new laws that have come into effect in Idaho banning the use of public funds to “promote” or “counsel in favor” of pregnancy terminations.
Titled Unconditional Care, the show invites artists to reflect on some of the most pressing health issues today – from chronic illness to disability and pregnancy. The participants share the stories of people directly affected by the challenges.
Items that touch on abortion have been singled out for removal from the exhibition. Artists were told their work violated Idaho state law that kicked in after the US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade.
Scarlet Kim, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s speech, privacy and technology project, said that the removal of works of art silenced the voices of women.
“It jeopardizes a bedrock first amendment principle that the state refrain from interfering with expressive activity because it disagrees with a particular point of view,” Kim said.
Monitors of free speech have warned that the supreme court’s eradication of federal abortion protections would soon make itself felt within the cultural realm through censorship. Thirteen states, including Idaho, have effectively banned abortion.
Jeremy Young, Pen America’s senior manager for free expression and education, said that abortion bans were inevitably spawning bans on speech – especially in educational environments.
“You cannot ban abortion without banning speech about abortion, as Lewis-Clark students are now discovering,” he said.
Six artworks have been removed from the Unconditional Care exhibition at the instruction of senior college administrators, and a seventh has been edited to remove abortion references. Four of the works are videos and audio recordings created by a New York-based artist, Lydia Nobles, as part of a series named As I Sit Waiting.
It highlights the stories of women who have had abortions or were forced to carry pregnancies to term.
Katrina Majkut, an artist who was commissioned to curate the Lewis-Clark exhibition, also had one of her own artworks removed. Titled Medical Abortion Pills, it consists of embroidered images of the medical abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol.
College officials objected to the descriptive label that went alongside the artwork which gave basic and accurate facts about the abortion pill, as well as factual information on Idaho’s abortion laws in a “post-Roe America”. Majkut said the administrators would not let her use the phrase “post-Roe”.
“I did try to have some alternative stand-in, such as a curtain placed over the work or a sign that said ‘Artwork has been removed in accordance with law’, but that was all rejected too.”
The artist added that she has shown the same body of work in more than 25 college galleries across the country, “and have never been censored or had an issue of any kind”. She said that the show she had curated was not protest art, and it was educational rather than inflammatory.
“Censorship of art is never OK. I see this as censorship of art, as well as suppression of academic learning.”
Michelle Hartney, a Chicago-based artist, also had a piece removed from her series Unplanned Parenthood which focuses on the 250,000 mothers who wrote to the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, in the 1920s. The censored item incorporated one of those original handwritten letters.
“It was really mild,” Hartney said. “It was simply a woman saying she had had an abortion.”
Asked for her response to the decision to remove the work, Hartney said: “It scares me. It’s frightening where we are going in this country.”
Lewis-Clark State College is based in Lewiston, Idaho, and has about 3,600 students. The Guardian invited the institution to explain why it had opted to censor the show, and a spokesperson replied that “after obtaining legal advice, per Idaho Code Section 18-8705, some of the proposed exhibits could not be included in the exhibition”.
Section 18-8705 is part of the No Public Funds for Abortion Act that was passed by Idaho’s Republican legislature in 2021, months after the US supreme court overturned the right to an abortion. The law forbids public entities from contracting or participating in any commercial transaction involving an abortion provider or affiliate, and creates a “gag rule” that bans individual public employees from counselling in favor of a pregnancy termination or referring anyone to an abortion clinic.
The prohibition has spread jitters across the state, especially in public colleges and universities. Last September the general counsel of the University of Idaho sent all its staff – including student workers – a lengthy memo that told them to remain “neutral” over abortion and “proceed cautiously at any time that a discussion moves in the direction of reproductive health”.
The memo reached the attention of Joe Biden in the White House. “Folks, what century are we in?” the US president said when he learned of the university’s instructions.
Last week a billboard truck displaying advice on how to access abortion pills that was being driven through the streets of Boise, Idaho, by the nonprofit Mayday Health was ordered to leave the city by police officers. The group said it was a violation of its basic constitutional rights.
