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Foes of the federal contraception mandate are cheering an appeals court decision requiring the Obama administration to devise exemptions to the new rule for two Christian colleges.

They were also buoyed the same day, December 18, by the District of Columbia Circuit Court’s reversal of lower court decisions to throw out their cases. The administration had argued that because it was crafting an exemption to the contraception rule, the cases should not go forward.

Most Americans are morally uncertain about abortion. Absolutists exist—like the defeated U.S. Senate candidates in Indiana and Missouri who would have prohibited abortion even in cases of rape—but they represent a minority view. Forty years after Roe v. Wade declared abortion a right, most people occupy an uneasy (and unspecified) middle ground: they want abortion legal in most cases or illegal in most cases, but either way they want to qualify their stance in some way.