'He was a man of his time'
The time being the 1930s, the man being a High Court judge.
The case in question being a famous case-making trial concerning doctors and the termination of pregnancy.
From the judge's summing-up: [I]f the doctor is of opinion on reasonable grounds, on adequate knowledge, that the probable consequences of the continuance of pregnancy would indeed make the woman a physical wreck or a mental wreck, then he operates, in that honest belief, “for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother”.
i.e. there was an invocation of the quality of the life in question.
He also made a fairly intricate argument with allusion to other medical conditions that doctors would and should not wait until the moment that death was an immediate risk.
And he pointed out that while the protecton that the law gives to human life extends to the unborn child in the womb. The unborn child must not be destroyed except for the purpose of preserving the yet more precious life of the mother
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