An 18-year-old woman was interviewed right before her abortion:
Q: When do you think it becomes a human life?
A: Well, it’s at the moment of conception, and it really – it’s hard for me now, because I started thinking of him as being a human now, because I know he’s probably almost developed and stuff, and its’s really sad for me to think of it. I guess I’m being really selfish about it. I just don’t want anybody to know. It is [just] the social pressure….So- I don’t know, it just seems the easy way out, the only way to do it without anybody knowing, you know, just to get rid of it before it gets big. …It really upsets me, because it’s kind of against my morals, I mean – I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think I really had a good reason to, because it does seem like it’s a human life…It would just look really bad, I think. Well, not just that, but it’s just not right for right now…because it would be a deterrent right now to both our careers…it’s too bad it happened, and it won’t happen again.”
Judith G. Smetana Concepts of Self and Morality: Women’s Reasoning about Abortion (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1982) 67-68
