Evolutionary Absolutism

Had a thought today - I was thinking about a single woman who is adopting her second or third child and I thought - "she works full time, what is the standard of care for these kids???" Now, I realized that was a stupid thought (hey, I'm a recovering pinhead - sue me) - she's well paid and a genuinely nice person, I suspect that those kids will have an incredibly improved life with this woman.

It gets interesting when I started thinking backwards. Why did I have that initial reaction? For some reason, I traced it back to why would someone put a child up for adoption? The old school reaction tends to be "irresponsibility." But hasn't adoption really become a way of helping ensure a better quality of life when parents are unwilling or unable to provide adequate care. In addition, many also see it as a great alternative to abortion or abandonment. But this position really only occurred after abortion and abandonment increased in numbers in the US (or arguably, as they became more public).

Now for the interesting part - can absolutism allow for change? Is it possible that the underlying, core values of an absolutist viewpoint can be maintained in the face of changes in the cultural context and result in an intellectually consistent change of "policy"? Can the responses generated from an absolutist worldview result in a shifting response? Is this another view of the conservative emergent position?