Before Roe v. Wade and the Pill, sex before marriage was a social disaster, and many tried to avoid that.
I'm trying hard to remember (I was so young then) if any adult, my parents included, ever discussed with me the social implications or consequences of those two landmark events: the introduction (to married women and then to the general population) of oral contraception ("The Pill") and of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
I was raised Catholic, and all I knew of were the whispered discussions of the mysterious "Pill" found in my mother's "women's magazines" (looking back, the recipes and household tips aside, they were generally full of tripe) and the fact that in the mainstream culture, Catholics were held in contempt because they (officially) did not believe in artificial contraception. No one at church sat down with us kids and discussed it with us, not even in Confirmation class. There were occasional articles in The Catholic Voice diocesan newspaper, which we received, but my parents never talked about it with me.
As for Roe v. Wade, this trickled down to me in the form of "fetus" suddenly entering the media's vocabulary and thereby forming the boundaries of discussion. No one at school (we received sex education in the sixth grade at our public school) talked about what abortion really meant, except in coldly clinical terms, the "termination" of a pregnancy.
There were far-reaching social implications and no one had a clue.
For non-Cathlolic women who actually experienced life before The Pill, the entire rituals of dating and marriage were markedly different “before” and “after.” You are fortunate to have been shielded by your Catholic faith from the sudden dive off a cliff, assuming you sought out Catholic men to date. The women just prior to your era also had the Vietnam War taking the manly men away just as they finished high school and/or college, which also heightened the pressures on dating and mate selection.
Beyond that, it would have been rare for parents of that era to see any new phenomenon as a socially- or morality-changing event in need of explanation to their children. People just didn’t think of themselves as a mass market for social change the way the evil Democrat and Communist Parties and the advertising business did. Now everyone more or less knows they are part of a mass market, but most people are still addicted to the brainwashing via entertainment and media.
We talked about it in my Catholic grade school and high school, but we didn’t understand it or it’s ramifications.
My mom talked to me about birth control (back in the 70s and 80s) and abortion, so I knew about it. My best friend got pregnant in high school and had an abortion and it floored me since I considered it murdering a baby and still do. My Mom said that with all the availability of birth control that abortion wasn’t necessary and birth control pills and other forms were the lesser evil.
Then when I had my own kids, I talked about it to them. Abortion is murder and wrong. A baby is always a blessing. If you find yourself in that situation, tell us and it will all work out. Birth Control isn’t a good thing but be practical and use it if you’re having sex. Don’t have unprotected sex ever (pill, condoms, etc.). But if you do, and you’re pregnant, then come to us and it will all work out.
My Mom and my Catholic schools talked about birth control and abortion. Numerous nuns telling us that this was a societal change of epic proportions. They were right. We just didn’t understand it at the time as kids and teenagers.