A prominent Catholic theologian and Democrat has said that new pro-abortion legislation in New York diminishes legal protections for pregnant women facing violence from a partner.

In a January 28 op-ed for the New York Daily News, Charles Camosy, associate professor of theology at Fordham University in the Bronx, argued that the removal of abortion from the criminal code altogether also eliminates the potential to charge men who attack pregnant women with the crime of killing unborn children.

“It has always been difficult for abortion activists to explain how they can consider a fetus a mere object to be killed and discarded in an abortion context — while in other legal contexts she can be considered a human being who is killed via homicide. Indeed, many U.S. states have explicit laws against fetal homicide,” Camosy wrote.