The promise of Christian ethics is its contribution to the forging of covenants of mutual assistance among human creatures in the variety of human activities. Such covenants bear witness to the work of the covenanting God. The pathos of Christian ethics, however, concerns the difficulty of making the language and reality of covenant intelligible in a culture bound to an ideal of autonomy. Christian ethical reflection concerning abortion and the value of unborn human life must attend to both features if it is to remain fully concrete in its faithfulness.