Before Roe v. Wade, most of America's first “pro-lifers,” as we would call them, were doctors and nurses. They were predominantly Catholic, yet they didn't understand what their religion had to do with anything. The way they saw it, opposition to legal abortion was simply a logical extension of their vocation.
After all, that once-pagan injunction called the Hippocratic Oath was the ethical bedrock of their profession. Popularly summarized as “first, do no harm,” the Oath spelled out this duty in some detail. Would-be healers were made to swear, “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel. Similarly, I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion.”
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