This would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic.
Frances Kissling of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania is saying in her post at the On Faith blog that it’s maybe better to kill babies than actually have them born in Mississippi. I’m not kidding.
And she’s a scholar at the Center for Bioethics?!
Now I’m gonna’ quote a large bloc here so you don’t think I’m telling stories. She’s referencing Mississippi’s personhood referendum coming up next week.
For those who do believe in the sanctity of life and the dignity and rights of persons, the Mississippi initiative raises many questions, chief among them: How are those of us who are persons to treat fertilized eggs, as well as born persons?
Mississippi is perhaps the last state with any standing to extend personhood to fetuses. A fertilized egg in Mississippi, should it be born, has one of the worst prognoses for a dignified life in the United States. What will that fertilized egg, once it is born, discover about how Mississippi treats persons?
The state ranks last among all states in health and third for the highest rate of diabetes and high blood pressure . It has the lowest per capita personal income and an unemployment rate of 10.6 percent. It is the last in academic achievement. More than 1 out of 5 people live in poverty. The state is second in the nation in terms of the imprisonment ratio (749 prisoners per 100,000 people.) If you are black, your chances of dying at birth or shortly thereafter are pretty high: fourteen out of every 1000 black infants ( 6.8 for whites) born die in childbirth or the first year of their lives. Your mother is more likely to die delivering you than mothers in 44 other states. If fertilized eggs could be afraid, surely the thought of being born in Mississippi would be traumatizing.
For people of faith, these are real ethical questions about what it means for those of us who have moral agency in terms of how we treat others.
Seriously? That’s what passes for bioethics nowadays?
In her argument for aborting babies she actually used the infant mortality rate! Huh? What?!
To be honest, if my life had to be in the hands of either someone from Mississippi or Frances Kissling, I’ll take the Mississippian. Every. Single. Time.
But more importantly, this brings to the forefront a running meme in the pro-abort community. Poor babies should die. If you’re going to be born poor it’s better that some doctor who graduated last in his Tijuana medical school rips you apart limb from limb in your mother’s womb – you know, because the infant mortality rate is so high.
Madness. Pure freaking madness.
November 3, 2011 at 1:31 am
Sigh. As a Mississippian, I'm pretty offended. However, as a Mississippian, I'm used to being offended. We're always the punchline. We're an entire state of nothing but strawmen and statistics. It gets old. On the bright side, this post has re-motivated me to get out tomorrow and knock on some more doors to get this thing passed. Sigh.
November 3, 2011 at 1:41 am
I think she makes valid points. How could you not? Especially as a Catholic?
November 3, 2011 at 3:07 am
This is the same Frances Kissling who was for years the president of
'Catholics for a Free Choice', the pro-abortion group that sought to
undermine Church teaching on abortion.
November 3, 2011 at 3:34 am
Words that should never be used together; Frances Kissling and bio-ethics.
November 3, 2011 at 3:56 am
"As a Mississppian, I'm pretty offended. However, as a Mississippian, I'm used to being offended."
Reminds me of something Kathryn Stockett, author of "The Help", says in the epilogue to her book: Mississippi is like her mother, it's OK for her to complain and make fun of it — but heaven help any outsider who dares to do the same!
Elaine
November 3, 2011 at 5:48 am
God, what a racist eugenicist Kissling seems to be. Hopefully God will smack some "Whosoever shall receive this child in my name, receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth him that sent me. For he that is the lesser among you all, he is the greater" sense into her.
November 3, 2011 at 6:56 am
I too found the reference to infant mortality utterly baffling.
So, if I do the math:
Aborted fetus probability of death = 1/1
Non-aborted fetus probability of death = 14/1000
Yep – real compelling argument you got there Francie.
November 3, 2011 at 9:34 am
Call yourselves "pro-life," but this bill is so frighteningly ignorant, banning some commonly used forms of birth control. Also, ever heard of an ectopic pregnancy? A complication of pregnancy that will not result in a baby but could kill the mother. Furthermore, Kissling is right. Start caring just a bit for the kids we have in Mississippi. Make their lives better before trying to ban birth control. Sheer ignorance.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20111030/OPINION02/110300305/My-pregnancy-spurs-me-vote-no-26?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Opinion|s
November 3, 2011 at 11:47 am
This is indeed the same Frances Kissling of "Catholics" for Free Choice notoriety. Sufficit.
November 3, 2011 at 11:51 am
Human existence begins with LIFE
Dead people do not grow. The state or Frances Kissling does not give LIFE and ought not contribute to the eradication of LIFE for with LIFE comes unalienable rights, sovereign personhood, reason, free will, virginity, original innocence, moral and legal innocence, the standard for Justice in America, and anygreat creative ness almighty God wills to bestow and endow on a newly begotten human being. Human existence is the criterion for the objective ordering of human rights. Without human rights, all men, persons, become the property of the state. This is every man's freedom the state of Mississippi is struggling to attain. The Spirit of '76 is coming alive. Some of us will die but we will overcome.
November 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm
I think she is on to something:
"If fertilized eggs could be afraid…"
Where would they be happier, in back woods Mississippi or in sophisticated NYC? NO CONTEST! In NYC they have only a 40% chance of experiencing life after the womb if they are black.
November 3, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Yes, this is total madness. The idea that you have to have a better than 50/50 odds of having a good life (defined by whom?) in order to be a life worth defending…..I wonder if the poorest of the poor in Calcutta ever talk this way?
November 3, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Well, where to start? Wasn't Jesus poor? So, it can't be okay to kill babies because they're born into a poor family. Mississippi is traumatizing? "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" John 1:46
November 3, 2011 at 1:19 pm
Francis Kissling is terrifying. She always has something hideous to say leading to reasons why various categories of people should be denied life. And this is always followed up by why the State should be 'doing more' for those sad individuals who slipped through.
Her writing is formulaic, uncreative and her ideas are unethical in the extreme. Does anyone take her seriously as an ethicist? Please tell me she has been excommunicated.
November 3, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Dear Anon who thinks Kissling was on to something. So…the solution to the poor having difficulty with birth is to kill the children. So…the solution to the poor not having proper access to medical care to prevent poor outcomes of birth (disability/death) is to prememptively kill them via abortion. So…the solution to poverty is abortion and birthcontrol…we've had that for the past 30 years, 50+ million have been killed. Where's our utopia?
November 3, 2011 at 5:10 pm
She left out that Mississippi gives the most to charity so all those awful things she listed still don't stop them from caring for the dignity of other human beings. Can't say the same for her…
November 3, 2011 at 6:25 pm
God breathed His name "I AM" into my lungs and my mother chose me. How in heaven's name did Kissling get a job working at the University of Penn in Bio-ethics? Do not send your chidlren there.
November 3, 2011 at 7:37 pm
According to Forbes magazine, Mississippi isn't even in the top 10 states for charitable giving. I "appreciate" all your pro-life blather. Really I do. However, no one seems interested in discussing the ignorance of amendment 26. Are you all really willing to prevent women from having kids via IVF, use the IUD?? Or worse, allow a women to die or doctors to be prosecuted for saving a woman's life? Hate Frances Kissling for being educated and thoughtful. Hate science. Hate biology, as you do. But put down the Bible and use your brains!
November 3, 2011 at 10:01 pm
We're the ones embracing science. Kissling rejects it. She states the human life begins at conception according to science but then says that only theology and philosophy can decide when it's a person. That's gobbledeygook. Pure and simple.
We agree with science. Kissling would rather her mood be the arbiter.
November 4, 2011 at 12:04 am
Most recent anonymous: IVF causes birth defects. IUDs have all kinds of complications. And Frances Kissling is neither educated nor thoughtful, and is in fact wholly unacquainted with elementary syllogisms. All humans are persons—"person" is a larger category than human, since it (at least theoretically) can have non-human members. Therefore nothing that exists and is a human is not a person, anymore than one can be human and not be a mammal. This is pretty basic logic, the kind of thing you'd find in a tenth grade math textbook.
But then again, you're commenting anonymously. So tell me, does it really tax your colossal intellect so much to sign in? Or are you simply too much of a coward?