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It has been claimed that this is a “bad faith argument.”
It is not. Legal Positivism is the doctrine being used to defend abortion: in effect, “abortion is not wrong because it is not illegal.”
The Nazis did the same. They FIRST legalized killing Jews, and THEN killed them.
It is not. Legal Positivism is the doctrine being used to defend abortion: in effect, “abortion is not wrong because it is not illegal.”
The Nazis did the same. They FIRST legalized killing Jews, and THEN killed them.
If you do not understand that this moral theory, namely “being illegal is what makes a thing wrong” is the same when (1) made in defense of killing abortion, (2) used by Nazis to justify genocide, (3) used by slave-owners to justify slavery,
then I can’t help you.
then I can’t help you.
If “whatever it is legal to do in your country is morally permissible to do in your country” is an argument that WORKS, then this justifies abortion, Nazi genocide, slavery, etc.
It makes an UNJUST LAW impossible.
It makes reformers like MLK BAD for opposing what was RIGHT.
It makes an UNJUST LAW impossible.
It makes reformers like MLK BAD for opposing what was RIGHT.
If, however, Justice is something over and above the law, as Socrates, St. Augustine, and Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. all affirm, THEN there can be unjust laws, and JUSTICE can and does sometimes require CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. 
The LEGALITY of abortion in current year has no more bearing on the MORAL PERMISSIBILITY of abortion than the LEGALITY of chattel slavery in 1850 did on the MORAL PERMISSIBILITY of chattel slavery or the LEGALITY of killing “Untermenschen” in Nazi Germany had on the MORALITY.
The ENTIRE Western tradition speaks with one voice that JUSTICE cannot be reduced to THE LAW, which is merely an instrument of Justice—with the exception of late 19th/early 20th century German legal theorists and many contemporary defenders of abortion.
