Frances Kissling

Frances Kissling (born 1943) was President of Catholics for a Free Choice from its founding in 1982 until her resignation in February 2007.

Early life
Frances Kissling was born Frances Romanski into a Polish working-class Catholic family in New York in 1943, the oldest of four children. Her mother divorced and later married a man named Kissling. Inspired by the nuns at her Catholic school, she joined a convent in the early 1960s at age 19. However after just six months she left due to disagreements with the church's teachings on divorce and birth control.

Pro-choice activism
Kissling became active in the women's movement in the 1960s. In 1970, after abortion was made legal in New York, she was asked to direct an abortion clinic in Pelham. In 1977 she was appointed founding President of the National Abortion Federation, a position she held until 1980. In 1978 she joined the board of Catholics for a Free Choice, and in 1982 she took over as president - a position she held for 25 years until her retirement in 2007. She is strongly committed to public funding for reproductive health and abortion, and is the co-author of Rosie: The Investigation of a Wrongful Death.

All pantextual commentaries on the 1983 Code of Canon Law agree that a Catholic politician or other public person does not incur excommunication latae sententiae (an automatic excommunication not requiring the special sentence of churchmen) for the public support of legal abortion.