Abstract

In a short section of his 2015 book Beyond the Abortion Wars, Charles Camosy claims that direct abortion to save the life of the mother is consistent with Catholic principles. Joshua Evans published an essay critical of this view in the Summer 2017 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, to which Camosy responded in the Summer 2018 issue. In the current essay, Evans replies to Camosy’s recent response by offering a further examination of three central issues in dispute: how the history of moral theology bears on public debates, how past authoritative Church teaching applies when the method of moral theology apparently has shifted, and how the analysis of vital conflicts is affected when examined in relation to more fundamental theological considerations.