Rebecca Kiessling’s existence resulted from a tragic event. Conceived after her mother’s rape more than 40 years ago, she was born after her mother sought two abortions and later gave her up for adoption. Now an attorney and a mother of five, she actively supports the “personhood” movement, which seeks to give all fertilized eggs the same rights as newborns.
Kiessling vigorously supports Proposition 26 in Mississippi, which redefines the beginning of human life as the moment of conception. Mississippians will vote on the amendment in November.
To peruse Kiessling’s website, and other materials supporting the amendment, is to witness the unapologetic confluence of cultural hot-buttons, appeals to emotion, and religious dogma. These are difficult reads for those who value honest debate, solid evidence and clear thinking, and not because they challenge the conscience.
Kiessling’s “Conceived in Rape” campaign conflates two emotional issues into one grotesque quagmire of conversation. Either issue alone requires delicate care, careful thought and considered approach to navigate, none of which is evident in her vapid mantra, “A baby is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman after rape.”
This volatile mixture of rape and abortion generates some indelicate questions. How are we to view her mother’s rape when, without its occurrence, Kiessling would not exist? If I could have, I would have prevented the rape, but that would have “doomed” Kiessling. Where does one construct the moral partition between right and wrong, here?
From the required event needed for Kiessling’s existence – the assault on her mother – there are also non-events needed to ensure her existence. Non-events create and prevent the existence of innumerable human beings. What if my parents, an hour before my conception, decided to go to sleep? This theoretical desire for extra rest would have been detrimental to my future. Their decision to use birth control at that time would be equally as devastating.
This vantage point atop the high mountain of our current lives provides an all-too-cloudy view of the events that shape our beginnings. Our mental intuitions are ill-suited to reflect in this way. For instance, my wife and I had the opportunity to view our youngest child’s genetic profile. What would we have done if severe Down Syndrome were diagnosed? If our choice were to abort, would we have been aborting our current son? No, of course not, because our current son does not have a chromosomal abnormality. Events move forward, while our emotional intuitions gaze back – thus many an incorrect analysis.
Every person on this planet has a specific configuration of genes that makes them who they are. There is only one, single precise point at which these genes form, and that’s when egg and sperm meet. If my wife would have hiccupped during the moment of conception, perhaps a different egg and a different sperm would have joined, and our son would be . . . a completely different boy. Imagining our son’s non-existence – and our own – is nigh impossible; it does not compute.
This is the vexing nature of past events and non-events – to focus on only one, or two, as Kiessling does, is to deny the others and beg the question: What does rape have to do with it? Why focus on abortion? When considering the staggering range of possibilities between being and non-being, Kiessling overemphasizes and improperly mixes two from a multitude.
Thus it is clear that her existential view of her past is certainly distorted by religion. Someone should tell Kiessling’s god that the practice of abortion is immoral, for this deity is extremely effective at the practice. Spontaneous abortion – miscarriage – is extremely high. A conservative estimate puts the rate of miscarriages at 25 percent of all pregnancies. It has been said that this fact makes god the most prolific abortionist in history.
Also, these religious “personhood” proponents like to sprinkle their websites with pictures of the unborn with fully-developed limbs and heads. This deceitful bait-and-switch is a pragmatic one, for they desire to bestow rights on an organism no larger than a period at the end of this sentence. One has a difficult time anthropomorphizing punctuation marks.
For me, it’s easier to see where a human being isn’t, than where a human being is, in the womb. A small clump of a few hundred cells is not yet a human being. As we move forward in the pregnancy, I will admit that demarcation becomes more difficult. This is were the religious insert the idea of a soul, which I reject on evidential grounds.
Rape has as much to do with abortion as does a hiccup during intercourse. Pity is understandable, but please, set it aside while the adults are speaking. Religion? Look, I’m willing to listen, but not to iron-age ideas from an alleged being who communicates with chisel and stone.
It’s time to grow up and discuss how to birth happy and healthy babies. To do this we need to use the modern tools of adults, and not childish methods and ideas.
Rebecca dearest is a self-absorbed, self-centered, egotistical psycho. As a matter of fact some women do abort pregnancies that result from rape due to the fact that a rapist is mentally deranged and that that psychosis may well pass down to the offspring and in this case it has. Matter of fact she had mental issues before she found out that her super villain birth mother nearly denied her existence and that daddy was a sadistic brutal individual. She has had psychological issues her entire life and after having perused her website, this has in effect gotten a lot worse. She may very well live in denial and claim that she is not a rapist’s child but in many ways she is very much her father’s daughter. Rapists are also very self-centered and feel that they should have whatever they want. They are very much into dominance and control. And Rebecca suffers from this as well. She wants to dominate and control the bodies of rape victims. As a matter of fact I honestly think that she somehow wants to punish her mother for nearly denying her existence by forcing all rape victims to give birth to their assailants’ offspring. She views a rape victim terminating a pregnancy as somehow denying her very existence and for this they must be punished. I think she views every rape victim as her mother. And if you say a rape victim should have a choice, she views it as you want to kill HER. There can only be one Rebecca. But yet Rebecca sees herself as the fetus of every rape victim and feels the need to exist. Aborting a fetus that is clearly not Rebecca is denying her existence to Rebecca. In short the woman is batshit crazy and honestly needs psychiatric assistance. I shudder to think how her five children will turn out and I am glad she was not born as a male. As a matter of fact I honestly wish that her mother had never been raped in more ways than one.
Metal Goddess, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Granted, I would have said it a bit more gently, since I’m sympathetic to the difficult situation that Rebecca Kiessling is in. But, I agree, she does strike me as a bit “off.” Usually, pro-life people will at least offer condolences to rape victims, even if they disagree with abortion. They will talk about “loving them both.” But when I watched Mrs. Kiessling’s debate with Gloria Allred (a rape victim who had an illegal abortion, and nearly died from it), she voiced no sympathy for Gloria or any rape victims–only for their aborted “children.”
I can respect Kiessling’s pro-life opinion (even if I disagree with it), and I can understand why she may feel hurt or angry that her mother wanted an abortion. But I can NOT respect how Kiessling makes the entire issue all about her; nor how she puts words in other peoples’ mouths (“Saying rape victims should have a choice is the same as saying I should be dead!”); nor how she insists on painting herself as a bigger victim than her raped mother (“Pregnancy isn’t the worst thing that can come from rape, abortion is!”).
When life begins is a key issue. If you look under a microscope you will find life smaller than any punctuation mark. Even science has given those living organisms names. An example would be Staphylococcus.
This is an equivocation. We don’t give rights to Staphylococcus.
We did give that form of life a name though didn’t we. Is a name a right?
I personally don’t think so, at least that’s how I see it. I look at it this way: To simply apply a name to something doesn’t confer a right. For instance, if we give a rock a name, like “Joe,” “Bob,” or “agate,” that doesn’t mean it has rights. The central question here is “human life” and when that begins, and when we should apply and confer that label & rights to a zygote/blastocyst/fetus, and at which time.
How about respect? Do you wash your hands before eating?I view the question as life, human or otherwise. When does life begin?
That’s the tough question that religion pretends to answer. My best answer is this, as I wrote in my post:
“For me, it’s easier to see where a human being isn’t, than where a human being is, in the womb. A small clump of a few hundred cells is not yet a human being. As we move forward in the pregnancy, I will admit that demarcation becomes more difficult.”
Miscarriages happen for many reasons medical scientists can’t explain or identify. Otherwise science would have solved the problem. Why accuse God of being an abortionist, if you don’t even believe He exists? Using your train of thought it should be just fine to kill the imperfect, and the elderly. Catholics and Protestants stand shoulder to shoulder to protest the murder of the unborn.
A clump of cells in-utero do not a person make. This is in no way making a statement regarding the elderly or the handicapped.
Science has increased the viability of the unborn in fantastic ways. A common way for women to die 2,000 years ago was in childbirth. Medical science has improved these odds substantially. We don’t have all the answers, but considering we’ve only been at it for a few hundred years, I’m optimistic.
If you think god is active in daily events, and everyone has a purpose, and that a blastocyst is a person, as many believers do, then THEIR god (not mine – I don’t have or want one) is a murderer.
This is in every way making a statement regarding the elderly and the handicapped. Shame on you!
You are simply making an assertion here and just restating your premise. I’ve told you why this is not true – we’re dealing with clumps of cells in the womb, and not the handicapped and elderly. I see a difference between the two. So far you haven’t made your case.
Hi Aloe: Good review. I agree in the randomness of a particular conception. Life happens whether we want it or not. Why not let it be? Although I am pro-choice because I believe in an individual’s right to make judgements based on their own beliefs and values and responsibility for the consequences of those, I believe life begins when the egg is fertilized, life with a soul. I don’t believe there area any evidential ground to prove otherwise.
I believe God gives life then nature takes it’s course. To create just to destroy makes no sense.