By reviewer consensus, Fordham ethicist Charles Camosy's Beyond the Abortion Wars is the book that all contemporary American Christians should pause to read before taking part in either ecclesial debates on abortion ethics or public debates on abortion law.Footnote ¹ I agree. Camosy critically analyzes the fraught, balkanized history of recent American abortion politics, develops an ethic of abortion that draws upon traditional Catholic moral theology, and proposes a legislative agenda that both accounts for much of the actual complexity of American opinion on abortion and childbearing, and also promotes his ethic. To accomplish all of this in a conversational tone and in well under two hundred pages (not counting copious footnotes and a full bibliography) is quite a feat. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of points at which historians, ethicists, and activists might wish to expand or challenge the argument, but that is because Camosy has been brave enough to make the argument both comprehensive and substantive.

Before unfolding the book's argument, it is important to acknowledge the significance of context both for the book and for its critique. When Camosy wrote, most academics assumed that a pro-choice, pro-social-welfare administration would follow Barack Obama's presidency; for instance, nearly universal access to health insurance seemed secure even if the delivery system needed repair. The current presidential administration and its congressional majority seem uncertain to support, and even likely to oppose, both abortion choice and social-welfare safety nets, and President Donald Trump's preference for surprise confounds political strategy and prognostication. But that some premises of both the book and the reviews are already obsolete simply reinforces one of Camosy's most significant convictions: good political arguments must reflect, though not be fully determined by, the resources and deficits of their political settings; they must use the tools at hand to build on what exists. He and we will just need to set to work again.

Camosy begins by reminding readers of the complicated history of US abortion politics. Between Roe v. Wade (1973) and the late 1970s, many prominent Republicans supported legalized abortion, and many influential Democrats opposed it. What he calls “the Costanza Strategy”—which identified Democrats with pro-choice and Republicans with anti-abortion platforms—took hold, and by 1980 both parties were staunchly univocal on the abortion question. Yet American opinion on abortion has remained considerably messier at all levels. First, there is concern that Roe v. Wade—argued primarily on the right to privacy, a comparatively derivative and flimsy right—may be bad law. In addition, there is a legitimate worry that abortion on demand actually limits support and choices for women, making unwanted pregnancy “their problem” rather than “our responsibility.” Further, Americans of all political stripes tend to favor restrictions on late-term abortions but also to argue that women whose pregnancies are the result of rape, or endanger their lives, should be permitted to abort. Camosy argues that these convictions, combined with the trend toward state restrictions on abortion in the United States and increasing limits in Europe and the British Isles, constitute a growing consensus: an inevitable global or at least Northern will to impose greater restrictions on abortion.

In chapters 2 and 3, Camosy builds on two basic claims rooted in Catholic moral theology: unborn human beings are persons, and morally innocent persons may be refused support or even killed in certain circumstances. In chapter 2, with philosopher Peter Singer as foil, Camosy demonstrates why making “trait X”—whether rationality, speech, the ability to feel pain, the ability to relate to others—the criterion of moral and legal personhood fails: no matter what trait we choose, we exclude some born humans to whom we would not want to deny personhood (Camosy does not consider the possibility that the threshold of personhood might involve conjoined conditions, X and Y, or alternative conditions, X or Y). Rather, what determines embryonic and fetal personhood is potential in the Thomistic/Aristotelian sense: “what already exists inside a being as the kind of a thing that it already is” (50). Still, one cannot say there is a person at fertilization: the brief “gray area” between conjoined gametes and personhood will always exist (53).

Chapter 3 treads on more difficult ground and draws the most criticism from moral theologians: Under what circumstances can one refuse or discontinue support to another person whose life depends on it? Under what circumstances might one even kill another person? Camosy raises analogous questions: Are we equally obligated to support all persons who will die without our help? Especially those whom no one else can help, as in Judith Jarvis Thomson's case of the unconscious violinist?Footnote ² He argues, for instance, that one can, for proportionately serious reasons like a threat to one's life or even rape, suspend or refuse aid to an unborn person by using nonsurgical means like Plan B and RU-486; he calls these indirect means because they aim not to kill but to end pregnancy.

Three principles that Camosy assumes rather than argues for contribute to these conclusions. First, all parents have a “natural duty” (77–78) to aid their own children, whether they have chosen those children or not; Camosy acknowledges that this duty de facto burdens pregnant women both morally and practically in a way that it does not burden men (109), and I would argue that it may also lessen one's real but impossible obligation to care for (all) distant needy children. Two further guiding principles, unfortunately not mentioned until page 165, come into play implicitly: “consistent nonviolence” and “a ‘preferential option’ for the vulnerable and marginalized.” “Consistent nonviolence” seems to argue against direct killing and dismemberment of unborn persons; the “preferential option” reminds all of their obligation to the vulnerable, both unborn and pregnant; and both together recommend making exceptions for women who become pregnant as a result of forced sex (Camosy later argues that the “increased burden” on a woman who becomes pregnant after coerced sex yields “a decreased sense of what is owed the child” [148]). This point is the most controversial, for if an unborn being is a person, its threat to the mother's life seems to be the only acceptable justification for ending its life directly; Camosy's turn to indirect killing does not fully satisfy such an objection.

In chapter 4, drawing on Dennis O'Brien, Cathleen Kaveny, and others, Camosy takes up the theme of the law as teacher. Using Ireland and Poland as examples, he argues that nations can shift abortion and welfare laws in a way that supports and empowers both women and children without instituting draconian punishments for women, abortion's “second victims” (105). Camosy's strongest point in this chapter is that abortion law must not protect unborn children's vulnerabilities at the expense of women's (95, 108); deeper analysis of the Polish and Irish cases would have been welcome.

Chapter 5 addresses the question of women and choice. Camosy employs Sidney Callahan's work to argue that current US abortion law serves men's sexual and economic freedom at the expense of women and children by creating the presumption that a woman who does not want to be the primary parent of the child she carries—or does not want to or cannot take time away from work to parent—should abort; father, community, employer, and government do not owe her or her child support. In short, “pro-choice” results in “no choice,” which is an injustice to women and children. To reinforce his point that women feel coerced to abort, Camosy cites ill effects, psychologically and relationally, for women who have had abortions. Unfortunately he does not compare these results with results on identical measures for women who did not abort, or cite the studies that find significant comparative economic and developmental deficits in households in which women are denied abortions.Footnote ³ This is not to argue that consequences are morally determinative, but to point out that one must cast a wide net when arguing that an action's moral standing depends at least partly on whether it leads to harm or flourishing.

Chapter 6 presents Camosy's legislative proposal. He reasons that strong social support for women and children makes childbearing and parenting (and thus abortion restrictions) less likely to pose an “undue burden” for women (137). Accordingly, he argues that good abortion legislation marries legal restrictions to a robust package of guarantees: wage equality, paid parental leave, an end to pregnancy and motherhood discrimination, protection from domestic violence, universal prekindergarten, subsidized child care, publicly funded adoption, better child-support collection, protection from coercion for abortion, and probably health insurance (Camosy assumes the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid). In general, abortion should be indirect (circumventing direct killing) and early (comporting with public opinion that opposes late abortions). The most lenient elements of his planned legislation accommodate cases like pregnancy after rape and children with illnesses sure to end their lives before birth, who can be delivered early. Camosy seeks to balance the possibility of women lying about coercion to qualify for abortion with the danger of state control of women's bodies, and the errors of weighting women's lives too heavily or too lightly in relation to their unborn children's.

Camosy concludes, “Our political categories are unstable in a deeper sense. The coalitions that were cobbled together in the 1970s no longer work and do not appear to be long for this world” (162). These words have proved true. But his answering vision, which hovers between hope and prediction, no longer seems within grasp: that growing nuance in Americans’ opinions about abortion will soon inspire a political realignment that resists “polarized binaries” (163), recombining elements of the “liberal” and “conservative” agendas in a way that is both pro-woman and pro-child. At this writing, the most probable realignment seems likely to fail at the first and affirm the second only with regard to abortion.

Camosy's book raises important questions for politics, for the very particular tradition of Catholic moral theology, and for Christian ethics generally. Among the most important political claims is his insistence that abortion reform must be only one element of a long list of justice guarantees for women and children. I'll focus my further comments on moral theology and Christian ethics.

First, with regard to both moral theology, and Christian ethics generally, Camosy's decision to name unborn human lives “children” is important for two reasons. Currently, for much of a pregnancy, unborn human lives have the status that parents give them (57). Is a wanted pregnancy miscarried before viability and in need of a birth certificate, or does it have a congenital defect that can be surgically corrected before birth, or is it born preterm, or is it a victim of domestic violence? Then it is a baby, according not only to custom but also in many cases according to law.Footnote ⁴ Is a pregnancy unwanted, or does someone want to claim that harm to it is not a crime? Then it is a fetus. This dichotomy is logically and legally incoherent. In addition, I agree with Camosy that the only ethically credible way to approach pregnancy and abortion is to argue that humans before birth are full if vulnerable persons and then to debate whether and when refusal of support or even direct killing is called for. I also agree with Camosy that this claim, combined with women's vulnerability to pregnancy, brings with it a host of social obligations to women and children. Yet to Camosy's insistence upon the personhood of the unborn, the need for social supports, and consistent nonviolence, we need to add that the absence of these supports amounts to structural violence against women and children; abortion is generally a response to that prior violence.

Second, Camosy cites parents’ (primarily mothers’) “natural obligations” to their offspring. Bringing this centuries-old trope—with all of its assumptions about marriage, inheritance, gender hierarchy, the “animality” of reproduction and early parenting, and the like—forward without comment weakens his argument. “Natural” in our era seems reduced to “biologically related,” which is not a morally robust case for responsibility beyond social custom or legal dictate. Camosy is correct that we are often obligated in ways that we do not choose, but the reasons for this should be that we are near, or indispensable, or have made prior moral choices that implicate us, not that we are “naturally related” to those in need. Women do have the burden of being indispensable to the unborn children they carry, and parents have responsibilities to their offspring, but not (in this age of gamete switching) because they are “naturally” connected to them.

In addition, for simplicity's sake Camosy skirts many issues and audiences that a rich engagement with his argument will need to take up. I'll mention just three here. First, although he takes sexual coercion seriously, he seems to imply that women's sex with men is either freely chosen or coerced; in fact freedom and coercion lie on a continuum, and few women can consistently place themselves at either extreme. Second, and a bit more challenging to argue given his Catholic audience, contraception's many positive and negative contributions to the American ethos of pregnancy and abortion must be addressed. Finally, Camosy misses a chance to engage the reproductive justice movement. Consequently, his argument retains a scent of white individualism (this mother, this baby, and this decision) and misses out on structural critiques friendly to much of his argument that women of color have already developed. As Kimala Price points out,

In addition, the reproductive justice movement is as much or more “about the right to reproduce at all and to keep and raise the children that one has in safe and healthy environments” as it is about abortion access.Footnote ⁶ This established movement, which supports both abortion and freedom to parent, makes Camosy's point about the ripeness for new alliances and alignments; Christian ethicists should be self-consciously engaging it, not ignoring it or simply speaking to it.

The accessibility and dual aims of Camosy's book make it an excellent choice for undergraduate courses on social ethics, US abortion law, gender and society, or related topics; graduate students could evaluate it as a model for writing in ethics and politics; and it would also be a good read for church-based adult education discussion groups, especially for inspiring constructive discussions among people who disagree.