““Indeed, the prevalence of abortion among Protestant women (versus mostly immigrant Catholics) is widely considered by historians to be one of the main reasons that physicians, worried that immigrant Catholics were outreproducing their mainly Protestant social group, led the campaign to criminalize abortions in the late 1800s. Other reasons cited include an upsurge in belief among physicians that the embryo is human life with a full moral status throughout pregnancy, a reaction to the campaign for female equality, concerns about the safety of the abortion procedure, and an attempt to consolidate control of medical practice. Nevertheless,””
