Well before the 1973 Roe SCOTUS decision, which effectively removed abortion criminal regulations in the United States, the place of the government and organized religion to determine both the morality and civil penalties for ending otherwise viable fetal life was fraught with careful analysis and discourse. What Williams has produced in this masterful tome is an excellent overview of the “forest,” as well as insightful close-up depictions of many of the “trees” that make up the landscape that is often both quite difficult to map, not to mention navigate.
The organization is both chronological and denominational, with the latter further subdivided into liberal and conservative wings. What is probably not well known to younger readers is that in the 1950’s and 1960’s, some liberal Protestants actually provided abortion referral services since they saw the restriction of pregnancy termination services to be a potential form of discrimination and even oppression of poorer women, as well as those of racial minorities.
Key in the Protestant analyses is the relevance and interpretation of Biblical passages that might seem to bear on the issue of elective abortion. When Williams turns to the Catholic positions, he notes correctly that the thrust of the Catholic debate was less on Biblical interpretation and more on the reading of the natural law, which Catholics maintain should inform and govern everyone involved in the abortion access issue. While popular sentiment may conclude that Catholic opposition to abortion was largely dependent on the papal magisterium, Williams provides a helpful expansion and correction to this common misunderstanding.
The Catholic narrative provided by Williams is equally nuanced. He corrects the assumption that Catholic opposition was always driven by modern papal mandates or personalities. Instead, he shows that early Catholic opposition was often framed as a sort of natural-law “common-sense” morality—self-evident truths that did not initially require explicit scriptural or Magisterial citation to justify. Williams carefully tracks the post-Vatican II evolution, where the “right to life” was reframed as a foundational human right within a pluralistic society. He highlights the work of figures like Eunice Kennedy Shriver to show the emergence of a “Catholic feminism of biological difference,” which sought to protect the unique dignity of life even in tragic circumstances.
Perhaps the most significant historical “correction” Williams offers concerns the Evangelical movement. Contrary to the myth that Evangelicals have always been the vanguard of the pro-life movement, Williams documents a period of “moderate conservatism.” Before Roe, many Evangelicals accepted therapeutic abortions and lacked a definitive theological consensus on when personhood began. It was the perceived “cultural repudiation” of traditional values signaled by the 1973 decision—combined with the influence of thinkers like Francis Schaeffer—that catalyzed the Evangelical shift toward moral absolutism and the eventual alliance with the Catholic Church.
Central to Williams’s analysis is the “Rise and Fall of a Consistent Life Ethic” that emerged in the 1980s, when Chicago Cardinal Archbishop Joseph Bernardin and his allies attempted to link opposition to abortion with opposition to the death penalty, nuclear proliferation, and poverty. Williams illustrates how this “seamless garment” approach eventually buckled under the weight of partisan polarization and key pushback from other cardinals such as New York’s John O’Connor and Boston’s Bernard Law. By the 1984 election, the American Catholic episcopate began to move away from this holistic view, increasingly treating abortion as a “singularly important issue” that superseded all other social concerns. This move effectively telegraphed a preference for the Republican Party, a trend that Williams argues was only partially challenged by the later “consistent ethic” revival under Pope Francis.
Williams does not shy away from the internal friction within these traditions. He explores the “communion controversies” surrounding pro-choice Catholic politicians and the rise of the “Reproductive Justice” framework among Black Protestants, who grounded their stance in a broader context of racial and economic justice. While the author provides a stellar historical overview of these debates, a minor critique might be leveled at his handling of technical theological distinctions. For instance, the nuance of “formal” versus “material” cooperation with evil—crucial for understanding why some Catholics feel justified in voting for pro-choice candidates—is mentioned but not deeply explained. This “inside baseball” of moral theology is perhaps where the historian’s lens reaches its limit.
The concluding chapters on the Dobbs era are particularly sobering. Williams observes that the reversal of Roe did not create the “culture of life” that activists anticipated; instead, it accelerated polarization and, paradoxically, saw abortion rates rise in some sectors. He frames the post-Roe struggle as a fundamental conflict over national identity: “Would the United States be a secular, pluralistic nation, or would it be a nation whose legal framework was guided by Christian moral principles?”
Abortion and America’s Churches will become an essential resource for scholars not only of church-state relations, but also for ecclesiologists and moral theologians working in the American context. It serves as a potent reminder that theological assumptions are the “silent partners” in American jurisprudence. Williams successfully demonstrates that the religious history of abortion is not a static chronicle of dogma, but a dynamic and often contradictory struggle to apply ancient faith to a rapidly changing modern state. For anyone seeking to understand why the abortion debate remains the “third rail” of American politics, this book is indispensable.
