Originally Posted by tore

I don't think that's the question. Clearly, any action which results in net positive amount of happiness is a morally good action according to utilitarianism. It already answers your question. The question for you should be whether or not you agree with that, if you could ever think killing for pleasure is morally right. And if there are scenarios where utilitarianism would allow for it to be, whether or not that completely invalidates utilitarianism in other situations, like abortion.

For me, it doesn't. I don't require utilitarianism to be flawless like you seem to do. I can apply it when it makes sense to do so and not when it doesn't. For example utilitarianism would have me break laws for good consquences, but when it comes to laws, I think a normative approach is better. I generally think that we should follow the laws in our society, even if happiness could be maximized by breaking them.

So whether or not it is possible to dream up a scenario where utilitarianism defends what you perceive as the wrong action is, to me, not really interesting. Your requirement for a morale theory to be flawless in regards to your own moral interests is, in my opinion, unrealistic. If you submit different moral theories to extreme testing, like you have with utilitarianism, none of them will satisfy you in every instance. Utilitarianism is not unique in that way