WELL: Interesting discussion of abortion by Joe Carter. The defense of safe, legal and rare abortion would go something like this: we know:
a. at least some women will get abortions whether they are legal or not
b. the difference between the medical safety of legal and illegal abortions is probably pretty significant (though I don't have lots of information on the topic, so this could be wrong)
therefore, on narrow utilitarian grounds, you could justify it, even if (I suppose) you thought it was morally wrong. I'm becoming less fond of this argument as I go on because I'm not a utilitarian, and it seems to me like there are some analogous situations I'd rather not port this logic to. But that's just me.
Nevertheless, this comment actually hit on something:
"For the left, there are no "dilemmas""
quite so, as Matt Yglesias would say, assuming one replaces "left" with "utilitarian," which I always found to be one of the more unsavory aspects of that moral theory.
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
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