Many opponents of abortion today are motivated by religious beliefs. Due to the reason that, in the 1950s and 1960s many women were attracted by new jobs in developing.
The idea that a fetus/embryo is still a human. You wouldn't kill a baby once it was born, neither would you kill a developing baby, regardless of the fact it cannot think or really feel yet. The religious motivation is that you shouldn't try to control death and life, if a baby is developing, then God allowed it to for a reason. The divine and predestined purpose concept.
They were changed from a more conseritive way of thinking to a more liberal way of thinking since they had to account for all the new types of cultures and races that were now part of their empire
