Britney Spears’s signature bare midriff and provocative poses may come to be considered relatively demure when compared to a new lifesize sculpture of the pop star soon to be displayed in Brooklyn.

The artist calls it a monument to the “pro-life” movement, but that’s not how local anti-abortion groups are viewing the sculpture of a nude Ms. Spears giving birth.

Sculpted by Daniel Edwards, the piece does not go on view for more than a week, but a Brooklyn art gallery says it has already received thousands of “hate e-mails” protesting the exhibition.

Mr. Edwards, 40, said the sculpture was a response to the interest in Ms. Spears’s pregnancy, which was constant fodder for tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines last year.

“I think the country was expressing a pro-life sentiment through its interest in the Britney Spears pregnancy,” he said.

Mr. Edwards titled the sculpture “Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston,” referring to the name of Ms. Spears’s child, who was born in September. He said the idea came to him after he saw photos of the pregnant singer in magazines, but he waited to start work on it until after hearing that the baby was healthy.

Mr. Edwards’s mother was just 17 when he was born, he said, adding that he applauded Ms. Spears’s decision, as a young celebrity, to go through with the pregnancy and raise a child.

The sculpture is a tribute to a “beautiful woman” and a “beautiful pregnancy,” Mr. Edwards said. The singer’s position in the sculpture is meant to combine her often seductive poses with a natural depiction of childbirth, including the graphic detail of the crowning of the baby’s head.

Critics of his piece say the image of a nude Ms. Spears delivering a child while kneeling on a bearskin rug doesn’t mesh with the conservative social message of the anti-abortion, pro-family stance.

“He may have had good intentions, but it’s a somewhat bizarre way to convey a wholesome message,” the state director of the American Family Association, Frank Russo, said.

The gallery, Capla Kesting Fine Art in Williamsburg, has promoted the involvement of the Manhattan Right to Life Committee in providing literature for the exhibit, which begins April 7. But after seeing the sculpture, the committee’s president, Jeanne Head, has distanced herself from the piece.

“At best, it’s in poor taste. At worst, it’s offensive,” Ms. Head said. She said Mr. Edwards had approached her about providing material for the exhibit, but told her only that the sculpture depicted a woman giving birth. “He did not tell me it was Britney Spears. He did not tell me it was depicting her in that strange position.”

Ms. Head criticized the sculpture as inaccurate. “I’m a registered nurse, and I’ve never seen a woman deliver in that position,” she said.

The brouhaha drew chuckles from the opposing side of the abortion debate. “If it pops up on Jerry Falwell’s Web site, I’d be shocked,” a spokesman for Naral Pro-Choice New York, Robert Jaffe, said, referring to the prominent television evangelist. Ms. Spears’s publicist, Leslie Sloane-Zelnik, declined to respond to questions.

Controversy is not new to Mr. Edwards, a classically trained sculptor who made waves last year with an exhibition in Chelsea of Ted Williams “death masks”- a series of plastic representations of the baseball legend’s decapitated head. Williams’s head was severed from his body when he was cryogenically frozen upon his death.

Mr. Edwards said he did not expect the opposition to his sculpture of Ms. Spears. “I thought people would love it,” he said. “I’m not angry or upset, but I thought people would embrace it.”

For Capla Kesting Fine Art, a small, 450-square-foot space on Roebling Street in Williamsburg, the attention has been surprising and a bit overwhelming.

“This is completely new to us,” the gallery’s co-owner, David Kesting, said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Mr. Kesting said the gallery has received about 1,000 angry e-mails a day for nearly a week. The e-mail volume crashed the gallery’s server, he said, forcing it to ask donors for more money to pay for increased bandwidth.

Mr. Kesting said he plans to print out all the e-mails and include them in the exhibition.

Despite the opposition, the sculpture’s debut next Friday figures to draw the largest crowd since the gallery opened two and a half years ago. “I’m not sure how we’re going to deal with all the people, but we’ll figure it out,” Mr. Kesting said.

Plans to exhibit the Spears sculpture at Capla Kesting had been in the works for months. It came about because of Mr. Edwards’s longtime friendship with co-owner Lincoln Capla, who has fallen ill with cancer.

Mr. Kesting is standing firmly behind Mr. Edwards’s sculpture. “I believe a work of art needs to stand on its own visually,” Mr. Kesting said. “I believe this piece does that.”