Virginia Abernethy (born in 1934) is an American professor (emerita) of psychiatry and anthropology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She received a B.A. from Wellesley College, an M.B.A from Vanderbilt University, and Ph.D. from Harvard University. She is an anthropology fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Abernethy has been called "an anthropologist at the center of the paleoconservative intellectual movement for over 30 years".^*

Fertility-opportunity hypothesis

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Abernethy's research has focused on the issues of population and culture. Her most famous work discounts the demographic transition theory, which holds that fertility drops as women become more educated and contraceptives become more available. In its place she has developed a "fertility-opportunity hypothesis," which states that fertility follows perceived economic opportunity. A corollary to this hypothesis is that food aid to developing nations will only exacerbate overpopulation. She has advocated in favor of microloans to women in the place of international aid, because she believes microloans allow improvement in the lives of families without leading to higher fertility.

Publications

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Abernethy has written or edited several books, including: Population Politics: The Choices that Shape our Future, 1993, and Population Pressure and Cultural Adjustment, 1979. Abernethy has written articles that have appeared in Chronicles, The Social Contract Press, The Atlantic Monthly, and numerous academic journals. She has also made occasional contributions to the weblog VDARE.

Positions held

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Abernethy served 1989-1999 as the editor of the academic journal Population and Environment. She also served on the editorial board of The Citizen Informer, the newsletter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and regularly addresses meetings of the CofCC. She is on the editorial advisory board of The Occidental Quarterly, a pro-European-American scholarly journal of "nationalist thought and opinion." Abernethy is on the Board of Directors of the Carrying Capacity Network, an immigration-reduction organization, and also on the Board of Population-Environment BALANCE, which advocates an immigration moratorium in order to balance population size with resources and the environment's capacity to cope with pollution.

Protect Arizona Now

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Abernethy's involvement in Arizona's Proposition 200 campaign generated new controversy. She was Chair of the National Advisory Board of the Protect Arizona Now (PAN) committee which promoted Proposition 200 in that state's 2004 election. (Proposition 200, which passed November 2, further limits access to voting and government benefits by anyone without documentation). On August 9 2004 the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which is reported to have contributed over $400,000 for signature gathering, issued a statement that called for Abernethy's resignation from PAN because of her "repugnant, divisive" views, including separatism.

During the campaign Abernethy replied to a journalist's question about her allegedly supremacist views by stating that she considers herself a separatist, not a supremacist.

"I'm in favor of separatism -- and that's different than supremacy. Groups tend to self-segregate. I know that I'm not a supremacist. I know that ethnic groups are more comfortable with their own kind."

• East Valley Tribune (AZ): "Migrant foe tied to racism"

In a letter to the Washington Times printed September 30 2004, she rebutted their reporting of her as a "self-described 'racial separatist'", indicating that she is an ethnic separatist instead. She went on to note that the nation has abandoned the motto, "e pluribus unum." She wrote, "The goals of the multicultural game are ethnic separatism, ethnic privilege and ethnic power." European-Americans are "late on the playing field" and need to catch up because if they don't play the game "my family and kin will lose out." ^*

1934 births | Living people | American academics | paleoconservatism