As one who has watched the evolving abortion debate since the 60’s, forgive these observations. The feminists who first lobbied for abortion legalization wanted nothing more than the power to become as sexually irresponsible, without consequence, as men were perceived to be.
Those who opposed them from a religious stance did so, not primarily to protect human life, but to ensure that promiscuity and adultery would always have the potential consequence of pregnancy.
Rapists in those days were executed when convicted and unintended pregnancies often weren’t discovered by friends and neighbors unless they knew why the girl went to visit her distant auntie for 6 months!
The left needed to obliterate shame as a way to destroy American faith in God. The right strove to keep what remained of morality and modesty intact. Neither side wants to remember their original arguments today!
I know you're talking about 40 - 50 years ago, but I'm old enought to remember some of this, and I have never encountered anyone --- not even by reading historic annals of the early opponents of abortion -- who opposed abortion in order to retain the use of pregnancy as a deterrent to illicit sex.
Most of the 19th century pro-lifers were doctors and/or feminists, and almost all of the 1960-1980 pro-lifers were Catholics. Who, of the early pro-lifers, opposed abortion to curb promiscuity rather than to protect human life?? Not Susan B. Anthony, not Elizabeth Cady Stanton; not Nellie Gray, Brent& Pat Bozell (Sr.), Jack & Sheila Kippley, John & Barbara Willke, Jow & Ann Scheidler, Michael Schwartz, Jo McGowan, Joan Andrews, the Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Family Life Office.
Any generalization must comprise specific instances. Can you name one specific example or instance? Do you have any factual foundation?
I'm interested in the history.