I think there's a bit more to it. I am reminded of remark (in Blish's *The Devil's Day*) about a black magician's final step into satanism. It is a huge reversal to go from "I will die for the good of all" to "I will kill for the good of all,"--a complete inversion of a central tenet of Christianity. I am also thinking that the early christian rejection of abortion as a medical practice might have had as much to with concerns about the mother as concerns about the fetus, but some research seems in order to that point--maybe some medical historian has already covered it.