My dissertation is a comparative study of the morality of abortion within the frames of three distinct ethical discourses: Protestant Christian ethics, Roman Catholic moral theology, and contemporary medical ethics, (a product, I argue, of American liberalism). A significant aspect of my analysis is devoted to investigating the ethical foundations that are unique to American Protestantism. That is, although the ethical thinking of mainstream Protestantism has borrowed significantly from each of the other traditions discussed, I suggest that its association with neo-orthodoxy provides a unique formulation for the ethics of abortion. Consequently, I demonstrate that each these traditions of moral inquiry is founded upon differing historical and philosophical assumptions and thus constructs incommensurate views regarding the morality of abortion. Put differently, I propose that there is no univocal meaning of abortion that precedes such evaluative frameworks; the history and philosophy of such traditions produce the condition of possibility for the apprehension of abortion. I conclude that cross-traditional conversations about abortion which assume that opposing sides are referring to the same act are doomed to unintelligibility.