News > March 23, 2007

A Pain, and Proud of It

Frances Kissling retires after 25 years at CFFC

By Ann Friedman

The “philosopher of the pro-choice movement” speaks at the March for Women’s Lives in April 2004.

On Feb. 6, when William Donohue, leader of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, attacked John Edwards’ campaign for hiring two feminist bloggers who had been sharply critical of church doctrine, Frances Kissling declared that Donohue did not speak for all Catholics. It wasn’t the first time Kissling and Donohue squared off, but it would be their last public tussle.

Less than three weeks later, Kissling stepped down as president of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), which has served as a dissenting Catholic voice on matters of reproductive and women’s rights since 1973. After 25 years, Kissling said, she felt her leadership was bordering on predictable and that CFFC would be invigorated by a new president. Donohue’s Catholic League Web site gleefully announced, “Good Riddance to Frances Kissling.” And the equally hard-line Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute crowed, “Kissling has been an outspoken opponent of Catholic Church teachings on contraception, abortion, gay rights and stem cell research, but has failed to change any of them.”

But Kissling’s long-stated goal is not to change Catholic doctrine on these issues, but to initiate conversation about them. For 25 years, Kissling has pointed out that criticizing church doctrine and agitating for reform is not anti-Catholic. “[T]he bloggers had a lot to say about religion and a lot to say that’s critical of the Catholic Church,” Kissling told Salon.com on Feb. 13. “Well-deserved criticism, in my opinion. But it feeds very nicely into the Donohue agenda, which is to cast everything that is critical of positions taken by the Catholic Church as anti-Catholicism.”

It’s an agenda that she made a career out of opposing. One of her first statements as CFFC president was to point out that committed Catholics have differing opinions about abortion. More recently, when conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named pope, CFFC launched Pope-Watch.org to monitor his actions and spark dialogue, not overthrow the papacy.

Kissling has deep roots in both the Catholic Church and the pro-choice movement. At the age of 19 she became a nun, but left the convent after six months. She went on to help found the National Abortion Federation and run one of the very first legal abortion clinics in New York. In 1982, she assumed leadership of Catholics for a Free Choice, a perfect match for the organization that positions itself at the intersection of feminism, Catholicism and civil liberties.

Anti-choice and fundamentalist Christian groups have long portrayed Kissling as a puppet of the secular pro-choice movement, claiming she uses her faith to win over more moderate Christians. And indeed, a recent tribute to her at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington featured a Who’s Who of the pro-choice movement—Gloria Steinem, former NARAL president Kate Michelman and the Feminist Majority’s Eleanor Smeal. There were many quips about religion, but no prayers.

“What Frances did was keep us grounded and honest by challenging the status quo,” Michelman says, describing how Kissling always played the role of the “anti-sloganeer” in coalition meetings. “She never accepted the expected way of addressing the challenges we faced.”

Under her direction, Catholics for a Free Choice not only sought to challenge the Catholic Church, but to reform the abortion debate in the United States. Consistently referred to as the “philosopher of the pro-choice movement,” Kissling was one of the first abortion-rights leaders to encourage discussion about the status of fetal life. Her 2004 essay “Is There Life After Roe?: How to Think About the Fetus,” published in CFFC’s Conscience magazine, is often quoted by anti-choice groups seeking to prove that abortion is a morally ambiguous choice.

At the time, the Republican-controlled Congress was considering and passing bills to expand fetal rights, and pro-choice groups were more reluctant than ever to tackle the subject. Unafraid of criticism, she wrote, “The prochoice movement will be far more trusted if it openly acknowledges that the abortion decision involves weighing multiple values and that one of those values is fetal life.”

As writer and self-described Catholic girl Anna Quindlen remarked in her tribute to Kissling, “It’s important to speak truth to the power of your opponents, but it’s more important to speak truth to the power of your friends.”

Kissling will likely continue to do so. In September, she will begin a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, where her challenging thinking on pro-choice politics will continue to inform—and agitate—the movement. As her successor, Jon O’Brien, who has worked with Kissling at CFFC for the past decade, bluntly put it at the event: “Someone at this tribute just had to say it. Frances Kissling is a pain in the —.”

Those are kind words to Kissling’s ears. “If I wasn’t such a pain in the ass,” she says, “no one would pay attention to me.”

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• Reader Comments

  The threats to legal abortion are numerous. Thanks to Kissling for her heroic struggles to preserve safe and legal abortion.

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 23, 2007 at 7:14 AM

  Wow ! What profound comments by Shitcago’s favorite colostomy bag cabbie above ! Now if we can only get yo’ mama to have a retroactive abortion...........................................................

  Posted by blondemike on Mar 23, 2007 at 2:49 PM

  Surely you don’t oppose safe and legal abortion. According to two well respected University of Chicago economists Roe vs. Wade was responsible for the drastically reduced crime rate throughout the 1990s. This was a positive effect of abortion. Don’t you agree?

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 23, 2007 at 11:24 PM

  I would have been more content if the article had given a bit more detail regarding the specifics of Kissling’s philosophical points in favor of legal abortion rights. Maybe the article’s scope didn’t include what I would’ve liked to read, but if she’s “the philosopher of the pro-choice movement”, I’d expect to get more than just an admission that that the status of fetal life is rightfully part of the debate. When, actually, it’s the heart of the debate.

  I raised a point a few months ago about this topic, in response to another article in which abortion rights was the focus. It was a long-winded question, and got zero response, so I’ll be briefer in hopes of getting something this time.

  And so my question: From a humanistic point of view, and particularly a socialistic perspective (which ITT apparently has, as well as many of its readers), can it not be argued that refusing to abort is actually more harmonious with those philosophical orientations than would be the choice to abort? Doesn’t socialism uphold a central value of protecting people, because the value of people is seen to take precedence over claims of rights (e.g. property rights), the unfettered exercise of which might actually result in harm to humans?

  I hope someone with that perspective will respond.

  Posted by Kuya on Mar 25, 2007 at 11:17 PM

  As a socialist I can tell you that abortion is considered to be a human right of all women. Reproductive rights are human rights and democratic socialists of all tendencies strongly support human rights. The unborn fetus is NOT considered a human being. Civil and criminal law does not proceed from the assumption that unborn fetus’s are fully human beings with their own legal rights as would be a fully born person who is out in the world. To repress the right to an abortion is to deprive a women of reproductive choice and thus her human and civil rights.

  Socialists do not view issues out of context or in absolute terms. In the case of abortion they tend to put everything in context. They tend recognize that most abortions take place very early in the first trimester when the fetus is least developed and thus more a barely differentiated agglomeration of human cell tissue. They further recognize that abortion can be made ever more rare by, (a) giving women more control over their lives through political and economic empowerment, (b) raising the living standards of women and of most people in general by pursuing policies that boost incomes and access to basic needs like education and health care, (c) promoting sex education, and (d) promoting family planning. Proof of this claim can be found in the fact that during the Clinton years in the 1990s, when these ideals came closer to being realized than they are today, the national rate of abortion declined by about 20% from the previous decades since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. Improved social conditions are the key to resolving many of these questions. The Bush Administration’s incessant moralizing has only worsened the very problems it claims to want to resolve in the abortion and other areas.

  An historic look at the abortion issues also contextualizes it in the history of gender relations.  Socialists “historicize” social issues in order to understand them as epochally specific phenomenon at various times in history rather than a transcendental absolute divorced form the changing power relations which framed the issue politically in terms of how it was seen and dealt with in society. Apparently, abortion is a century old practice which took place on a regular basis until modern times. Even the Roman Catholic Church didn’t issue a Papal condemnation of the practice until 1869.  It was in the 1860s that a number of Western Democracies, such as the US and the UK, passed legislation outlawing abortion. Abortion’s recent opposition is most probably tied to, (a) a growing male dominated medical profession wishing to disempower midwifery which often used the practice, and (b) the need to emphasize male power within the long emerging institution of the nuclear family which privaleged male labor over female labor now placed back in home with the rise of industrial capitalism.  Thus, reproductive rights becomes genderized in history at a particular stage of capitalist development.

  In considering these issues, socialists see abortion as a human right for women which must be defended. It is a question of pursuing a struggle for basic rights which is tied to the overall fight for social and gender equality.

  Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Mar 26, 2007 at 10:51 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 27 posts.

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Also by Ann Friedman

• A Pain, and Proud of It
  Frances Kissling retires after 25 years at CFFC