"As early as 1971"?? That would be 3 years after Humanae Vitae and nearly 100 years after the Holy Office of the Catholic Church wrote in 1884 that "it cannot be safely taught in Catholic schools that it is lawful to perform . . . any surgical operation which is directly destructive of the life of the fetus or the mother."
Long before that, The Fathers of the Church unanimously maintained the same doctrine. In the fourth century the Council of Eliberis decreed that Holy Communion "should be refused all the rest of her life, even on her deathbed, to an adulteress who had procured the abortion of her child. "
Abortion didn't begin with Roe v Wade. What took ya so long?
you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.The Didache, ca. AD 100