The other day I asked an Amish friend of mine whether he thinks abortion is morally acceptable. His adamant answer was an unequivocal; No. When asked why, he says it’s unnatural; it doesn’t conform to natural law.

My friend is not the typical close-minded Amish person and his idea is that natural law is based on the physical laws; the laws of nature. He agrees with me that evolution is a natural outcome of biological agents living in a universe with our physical laws. He goes on to assert that the characteristics of evolution, such as the tendency to survive as an individual and to reproduce as a species; is natural law. Abortion, he says, is morally wrong because it does not conform to this natural law. It opposes the natural law of reproduction. He claims that morality is objective and it can be derived from the physical laws in the aforementioned way.

My first response to his argument was that abortion isn’t found in the animal world (and is unnatural in that regard) because it requires advanced technology which non-human animals don’t have. My second criticism was that we engage in a lot of activities which aren’t “natural” but he considers to be moral. Marriage and monogamy, for instance, do not conform to his idea of natural law.

My friend admitted that he would have to rethink his position but he refuses to accept my position; that there is no inherent or objective morality, there is only behavior that we don’t put up with.

What do you think? Is morality a set of objective, non-changing, ultimate-truth, ideals or does it evolve with society?