Do you have iron clad ethics that don't change no matter what?

BC and I discussed this the other day and it got me thinking about the topic.

Is stealing always wrong? Do your particular circumstances change the “rightness” or “wrongness” of your actions?

Killing an innocent person for no reason is murder. Killing a person who is assaulting a family member whom you reasonably believed would not survive the assault, would be considered “justifiable homicide”.

These are basically the same act - the only difference being the circumstances of the individuals involved.

This being the case is stealing always wrong?

If your babies were starving to death and you had the opportunity to “steal” food to feed them would you pass that opportunity up in order to stick to your guns?

I suspect none of us have ever had to walk in those particular shoes, so a real opinion on the topic may be hard to come by, but I am interested in this idea of “situational ethics, vs. etched in stone ethics.”

JCM