Psychiatrist and anthropologist Virginia Abernethy of Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine
I don’t think abortion is ever wrong. As long as an individual is completely dependent upon the mother, it’s not a person.
The article in which this quote appears goes on to say:
In this view, which is shared by other pro-choice theorists, an individual becomes a person only when he or she becomes a responsible moral agent—around three or four, in Abernethy’s judgment.
Until then, she thinks, infants—like fetuses—are nonpersons; defective children, such as those with Down syndrome, may never become persons.
Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Hardest Question,” Newsweek, 14 January 1985
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