Joseph Fletcher, abortion advocate and professor at the University of Virginia:
An “individual” is not a “person” unless he has an IQ of at least 40, is self-aware, has self-control, with a sense of time (past, present, and future) and an ability to relate to others.
Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality, cited by Mark O’Keefe, “Personhood: When Does It Begin…or End?” Oregonian, 12 February 1995, Bl.
This would mean that newborn babies were not people, justifying not just abortion, but infanticide.
By his logic, small children, babies (and of course foetuses), learning disabled people, autistic people (can’t relate well to others) and those with ADHD (little or no sense of time, some have poor control of themselves) are all non-persons. Which includes me, as I have autism and ADHD, combined with being a member of Memsa, yet still dependant on my mum. I bet he would have loved for me to be aborted!
What he really means is, that anyone who is too different from him for him to empathise with, does not matter.