If you believe that life begins at conception, created in the image of God, and that abortion is the unjust taking of a human life, then we are in the same fight.
In recent years, the Abortion Abolitionist Movement has brought a burning passion and a sharp biblical reminder to the forefront: we must never rest until every single unborn child is protected by law. That zeal comes from a righteous desire to honor God and end a national tragedy. But somewhere along the way, a divide has formed. Too often, a line has been drawn that says: "If you do not pursue the end of abortion through our exact legislative blueprint, you are a compromiser, a fake Christian, or a defender of murder."
I want to address these arguments directly and fairly. My goal is not to tear down Abolitionists, but to call us to work together where we can. We do not need a narrow political agenda that breaks fellowship over tactical disagreements while babies are still dying. Let's look at these claims honestly, biblically, and historically. Throughout, I will try to state the Abolitionist position the way Abolitionists themselves would state it, and I ask the same in return.
Where We Agree
Before looking at where we differ, let me be clear about where we stand together. Every human being, born and unborn, bears the image of God from fertilization (Gen 1:26-27; 9:6). Abortion is homicide, not a private sin the magistrate should leave alone. Partiality is sin (James 2:8-9). God's standard of righteousness never changes, because it is embodied in Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). The child conceived in rape and the child with a devastating diagnosis are just as much our neighbors as any other child.
Our disagreement is not over any of these truths. It is over what faithfulness to them requires when we are reforming laws that are already deeply unjust.
The Tactical Equivalence Trap
Claim 1: "Unless you fight to make the act of abortion illegal in every circumstance right now, your goal is to keep abortion legal."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
They want to protect God's standard of justice. They fear that if we settle for regulating abortion instead of banning it entirely, we are giving the government permission to kill certain children based on age or stage of development.
Is This Claim True?
This claim assumes there is only one valid way to oppose a sin: immediate criminal legislation. Scripture and reality show us that is false.
Consider adultery. Almost every Christian and Abolitionist agrees it is a serious sin against God. In fact, under the civil law God gave Israel, adultery was a capital crime, carrying the same penalty as murder (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22; compare Exod 21:12). Yet, very few Abolitionists are lobbying state legislatures to criminalize adultery, much less to make it a capital offense. We have sexual laws to protect minors, but Abolitionists are not lobbying to pass the same laws to protect adults. Does their lack of legislative lobbying mean their goal is to keep adultery legal or promote sexual immorality? Of course not. They recognize that different sins require different cultural, spiritual, and social responses. Legislative action is only one tool in driving out evil. Omitting a specific political tactic does not mean you endorse the sin. To say someone is "pro-abortion" because they utilize incremental legislation or alternative Biblical methods to save lives is a false dilemma.
Some have objected that this comparison is a category error, because abortion is homicide and adultery is not. I agree that abortion is homicide, and I am not saying the two sins are the same, or that adultery should be punished with death today. My point is narrower. God Himself placed adultery alongside murder among the crimes His civil law punished with death. If Abolitionists can decline to pursue the immediate criminalization of a sin that God's own law made capital, and no one concludes that they secretly want adultery to flourish, then they should extend the same charity to brothers and sisters who pursue the end of abortion through a different sequence of legislative steps. This claim is not about which sins are worst. It is about whether choosing a different legislative tactic proves that someone wants a sin to continue. It does not.
Some Abolitionists have acknowledged that abolition may require many legislative. If that is so, then their real disagreement is not whether to take steps, but which steps are faithful. I take up that question directly as we continue.
Does Incremental Legislation Work?
Claim 2: "Laws that restrict abortion don't work, make Christians lazy, and cause more abortions."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
They worry that when a heartbeat bill or a 15-week ban passes, Christians dust off their hands, say "We won!", and stop fighting while thousands of older or younger babies are still being killed.
Is This Claim True?
The claim that restrictive laws don't save lives or that they cause more abortions contradicts basic reality: when you make something harder to get, fewer people get it.
The idea that passing restrictive laws makes people lazy is self-contradictory. By that logic, passing a total ban would make Christians even lazier, leading them to ignore illegal underground abortions. Even worse, by that logic, passing such a law would make people stop caring about changing the hearts of those who approve of abortion. The reality is that passing laws doesn't make people lazy at all either way. What people do regarding abortion is merely a reflection of their fundamental belief about abortion.
When surgical abortion clinics close due to territorial restriction laws, local surgical abortion rates drop and statistics back this up. The rising availability of chemical abortion pills (mail-order mifepristone) doesn't mean state-level surgical bans failed. It means the battleground shifted. A law that stops surgical abortions can be nearly 100% effective at stopping those specific surgical abortions. It isn't ineffective because it doesn't address every way people get abortions. Even a state or federal law that makes all abortion illegal in that state or country doesn't address the issue of people going out of the state or country to get an abortion. If Abolitionist logic is consistent, passing any state or federal legislation outlawing abortion would be ineffective and not worth passing. This is clearly not the case. Any law will only restrict abortion; it can't end it. Therefore, any law that restricts abortion can only be effective at restricting what it is designed to restrict. Laws do not magically transform unregenerate hearts. A law against murder reduces murder through deterrence; it does not end hatred. Restrictive laws are not the final destination, but they are defensive ground gained. Therefore we should support laws that restrict abortion, as long as they move children from unprotected to protected and take protection away from no child who already has it.
The Hermeneutic of Justice vs. The Reality of Progress
Claim 3: "Deuteronomy 16:19 commands us not to show partiality. Voting for a heartbeat bill shows partiality to older babies over younger ones, which is a sin."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
Deuteronomy 16:19 says, "You shall not distort justice; you shall not be partial..." They argue that protecting a 12-week fetus while leaving a 6-week fetus unprotected applies an arbitrary, ungodly standard of partiality based on age or size. They also point to passages that condemn unjust lawmakers, such as Psalm 94:20 and Isaiah 10:1, and to James 2, which ties impartiality to the royal law of loving our neighbor.
Is This Claim True?
I agree that partiality is sin wherever it appears, including in legislation. If lawmakers wrote a law because they valued some children more than others, that would be sinful partiality. But this argument and verse are the cornerstone of the Abolitionist legislative strategy, and I believe they misapply scripture and misunderstand how God works in a fallen world.
Context Matters: Deuteronomy 16:19 is an instruction for judges in a courtroom. The rest of the verse says: "You shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the righteous." It commands judges not to favor a rich person over a poor person, or twist testimonies when rendering a verdict. In the United States, we have a judicial system and a legislative system because these things are fundamentally different. The judicial system interprets the law and makes judgments, which is exactly what Deuteronomy 16:19 addresses. It is an instruction on upholding righteous laws, not a manual for how to enact legislation to dismantle deeply entrenched evil in a corrupt society. Incrementally passing a law with less corruption than is in the current law enables judges to enact more justice. It does not prevent them from enacting any justice, because before the incremental law was passed their hands were completely tied. What really prevents judges from enacting justice are people who prevent any law that is incrementally more just from passing because they will only vote yes on perfect laws.
What About the Other Partiality Passages? Abolitionists are right that Scripture's concern for impartiality reaches beyond the courtroom. But when we look at each passage they cite, we find it speaks to a different situation than ours:
- Leviticus 19:15, Deuteronomy 1:17, and Proverbs 24:23 instruct judges not to pervert justice when rendering verdicts, whether by favoring the rich or the poor.
- Psalm 94:20 condemns corrupt rulers who frame mischief by statute, attacking the righteous and condemning the innocent to death.
- Isaiah 10:1-2 pronounces woe on those who write decrees to rob the widow, the fatherless, and the needy for their own gain.
- James 2 rebukes believers for giving the rich man the honored seat in the assembly while humiliating the poor man.
In every one of these, partiality means favoring one person over another, at the expense of the vulnerable, for some personal advantage or evil agenda. None of them describe people trying to reform an evil law while their opponents fight to keep it evil. Christians who vote to protect more children are not doing so because they love some children more than others. The line is drawn by whom they can currently save, not by whom they value more. Drawing a line based on what we can reach is not the same as drawing a line based on whom we love.
A Closer Look at Psalm 94: Of all these passages, Psalm 94:20-21 is cited most often against incremental legislation, because it speaks directly about laws: "Can wicked rulers be allied with you, those who frame injustice by statute? They band together against the life of the righteous and condemn the innocent to death" (ESV). Abolitionist material usually quotes verse 20 alone, but we don't have to guess what "framing injustice by statute" means. The very next verse tells us.
These rulers use the law itself as a weapon. They band together against the righteous, and they use statutes and courts to pronounce innocent people guilty, declaring them wicked and worthy of death. That is the Bible's own description of framing injustice by statute: a law that condemns the innocent.
If a law said, "Every child conceived in rape is guilty of a capital offense and must be put to death," it would be exactly what Psalm 94 condemns, and every Christian should oppose it. But incremental pro-life laws say nothing of the kind. They do not declare any child guilty for being conceived so that they must be put to death, and they do not take protection away from any child who has it. What they often fail to do is repeal ALL of the evils of abortion. I grieve that failure, and I want all children protected. But leaving part of an existing evil law unrepealed is very different from framing a new law that pronounces the innocent guilty.
We can't build our own definition of "framing injustice by statute" and then attach Psalm 94 to it. The psalm defines the phrase in the next verse. If we stretch it to cover something the text does not describe, we are no longer letting Scripture speak; we are making it say what we want it to say. Psalm 94 condemns rulers who create injustice by statute. It says nothing about reformers who remove injustice from the statutes a step at a time.
God's Model of Incremental Conquering: The Old Testament does not give us explicit rules for how to enact laws in a secular republic, but it does give us an example of how to take over a corrupt land, and this is likely our closest example of taking over a corrupt set of governmental laws. God Himself rarely executes His ultimate goals in a single, overnight instant when dealing with human logistics. In Exodus 23:29-30, God tells Israel regarding the Promised Land: "I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate and the wild animals multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased and possessed the land."
Was God "distorting justice" or "compromising with evil" by driving out the Canaanites incrementally? No. God understood human capacity, logistics, and the danger of chaotic power vacuums. Israel's sin in taking over the Promised Land was not that they conquered it incrementally. Their sin was that they eventually stopped treating the Canaanites as a temporary presence to be phased out, and started treating them as a permanent fixture to be exploited. An incremental strategy only becomes a sin when you settle for less than the final goal. Sequentially conquering current abortion laws is in line with the little by little approach outlined by God as long as we don't give up until the job is done.
Some Abolitionists point out that just two verses later God commands Israel to make no covenant with the Canaanites or their gods (Exod 23:32). I agree completely, and it strengthens the point. Israel was not to make peace with the Canaanites or join in their sin. Pro-life legislators and voters who pass a law protecting more children are not making peace with abortionists or joining in their killing, and they are not declaring the killing that remains to be righteous. They are taking ground away from the abortion industry. The conquest was gradual, but every step of it was a step against the Canaanites, never an agreement with them. A law that protects more children than the law it replaces is a step against abortion, not a covenant with it.
God's Standard Does Not Change, but His Dealings With Sin Do: Let me be clear: God's standard of righteousness never changes. What does change across history is how God deals with sin and how fully the civil laws He gave enforced His standard (Luke 12:47-48; Acts 17:30).
The Mosaic law was never the complete embodiment of God's righteousness. Scripture calls it a guardian until Christ came (Gal 3:23-25) and a shadow whose substance belongs to Christ (Col 2:16-17; Heb 10:1). In Matthew 5, Jesus is not abolishing the law or improving God's morality (Matt 5:17-18). The commandment against murder always condemned hatred, and the commandment against adultery always condemned lust. But Israel's civil courts could only punish the outward act. Jesus reveals the full depth of the righteousness the law pointed to but did not, as a civil code, enforce.
Jesus makes this explicit in Matthew 19:8. Moses permitted divorce "because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so." God's standard for marriage never changed (Gen 2:24), and God hates divorce (Mal 2:16), yet the civil law He gave Israel regulated divorce rather than forbidding it (Deut 24:1-4). Was God showing partiality toward hard-hearted husbands, or covenanting with evil? Was God’s goal or standard to just regulate divorce? Of course not. He was governing a fallen people without ever redefining righteousness.
If a civil law God Himself gave did not enforce the fullness of His standard, we cannot expect laws passed by fallen people in a fallen republic to do so either. That is no excuse to stop short. It is a reason to keep Christ as our standard and keep reforming our laws toward Him, for as long as it takes.
Christ's Maturation Model: In Mark 4:26-29, Jesus describes the Kingdom of God growing like a seed. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. God's word does not instantly produce the full kernel; it develops over time. James 1:4 further drives this home, telling us to let endurance have its complete work so we may be lacking nothing. The nature of endurance means we must face trials where we are still lacking in order to grow. As John 15 states, God continually prunes those who are fruitful to increase their fruit.
God working incrementally in us does not mean God is a compromiser. It does not mean God condones sin. It means the nature of how God drives out sin is incremental. We are instructed not to pervert righteous laws, but when it comes to driving evil from something corrupt, the Bible teaches that we are to persistently and incrementally take ground until Jesus returns.
To be clear, sanctification is progressive, but God's definition of holiness is not. I am not arguing that the standard grows. I am arguing that the work of conforming people, and laws, to that unchanging standard happens over time. A believer who puts off one sin this year while still fighting another is not declaring the remaining sin acceptable. Neither is a voter who removes part of an evil law while still fighting the rest.
Sequential Versus Partial: When something is accomplished sequentially, it does not mean that people are showing partiality because they have an order in which they accomplish the task. If I were to spend one-on-one time with all of my kids, I am forced to spend time with them in some sequential order. Just because I spend time with one first does not mean I am showing partiality toward that kid, because they will all get their turn and there are advantages to being both first or last. I would only be showing partiality if I didn't do something with them all. Likewise, just because we can't save every unborn child today does not mean that we won't work to save them all over time. Not everything can be accomplished all at once, and just because something is done in sequence does not mean that we are being partial toward someone over another. Even Romans 2:9-11 illustrates this when God works justice first for the Jews and then for the Gentiles. Because he works justice for both, He is said to be impartial regardless of the fact He works in a sequence.
Perfection Over Our Best Effort?: If someone were faced with the dilemma of having 10 children who were actively being killed, would making their best effort to save as many of them as they could be a condemnable act of partiality? No, just because they couldn't save them all does not mean they are showing favoritism toward the ones they could save. Scripture directly refutes the idea that saving a fraction of lives under real-world constraints constitutes sinful partiality or a compromise of God's standard. In 1 Corinthians 9:22, Paul articulates a moral framework centered on practical maximization, declaring that he became all things to all people "so that by all possible means I might save some." Paul recognized that rescuing some within earthly limitations is a righteous triumph, not a moral failure. Jesus reinforced this in Luke 14:5 when He challenged rigid legalism, asking if anyone would refrain from pulling a child or an ox out of a pit on the Sabbath; Christ explicitly demonstrated that the immediate preservation of life and mitigation of harm supersedes abstract standards that leave victims to perish.
Consider a burning building. If rescuers can reach the people near the exit but cannot yet reach those on the ninth floor, pulling the first group out is not favoritism. The line is drawn by whom they can reach, not by whom they value more. Refusing to save anyone until everyone can be saved does not honor the people on the ninth floor. It just means everyone burns.
To confuse sequential progress with sinful partiality is to mistake rigid legalism for biblical righteousness. Scripture demonstrates that God routinely works sequentially in a fallen world, calling His people to maximize practical good and rescue the innocent within their present opportunity. Passing incremental protections is not an endorsement of the evil that remains, but a strategic effort against it. It enables us to save every image-bearer within our reach today while relentlessly pressing toward a complete end of abortion. Refusing to protect the children we can save right now simply because we cannot yet save them all is not a holy stand for justice; it is abandoning the vulnerable to maintain ideological perfection. Faithful obedience demands that we take every inch of ground available, exercising targeted mercy step by step until total protection is secured for every unborn child.
Law Enforcement vs. Education and Support
Claim 4: "Education and support are secondary to law enforcement. You cannot educate someone out of committing murder; you must restrain them with the threat of prison."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
To be fair, many Abolitionist ministries do emphasize the gospel and practical care for mothers. The disagreement is mostly over priority and emphasis. Abolitionists argue that the root issue of abortion is not a lack of resources, but a lack of justice. They believe that treating abortion primarily as a socio-economic issue downplays the reality of the crime. To them, offering resources instead of demanding immediate criminal penalties ignores the state's biblical role to execute justice. Their logic is simple: you wouldn't offer a financial seminar to someone attempting to assault a toddler; you would call the police and put them in jail. Furthermore, they lean on the biblical concept that the law itself acts as a teacher. Pointing to Galatians 3:24, which describes the law as a "schoolmaster" (or tutor) to lead us to Christ, they argue that civil law instructs the moral conscience of a nation. If the law permits abortion, it teaches the public that abortion is acceptable. Therefore, they believe the most effective way to "educate" the public is to pass uncompromising laws that clearly define abortion as murder.
Is This Claim True?
While the state absolutely has a duty to restrain evil, and the law does serve to instruct the public conscience, criminal penalties are not the only solution to the complexity of human desperation. There are biblical limitations to the law itself.
First, we must acknowledge that while God's law is a schoolmaster that reveals our sin, it has no power to change the human heart. Even the context of Galatians 3 is clear on this. Galatians 3:21 states, "For if a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law." Romans 8:3 further reminds us that the law is "weakened by the flesh." The civil law is instituted by God to restrain and punish evil (Romans 13), but it cannot regenerate a dead heart. Laws can only reduce murder; they will never completely end it. If a movement relies solely on the threat of prison to fix a broken culture, it will ultimately fall short. Jail alone will not stop people from making horrific choices if abortion is the only path they can envision. The law is only useful up to a point. Ultimately, we need to reach and change hearts.
Second, we have to look at why people want an abortion. While some women act out of cold self-interest, many seek abortions out of intense fear, severe financial distress, a total lack of community support, or direct coercion from partners. By offering tangible assistance through Pregnancy Resource Centers, such as medical care, housing resources, parenting classes, and financial aid, we are eliminating the perceived necessity of abortion for these mothers.
When some Abolitionists claim that Pregnancy Resource Centers "don't work" or distract from the real fight, they ignore the undeniable fruit of these ministries. At least hundreds of thousands of children are alive today because terrified mothers walked into a clinic, saw an ultrasound, and finally realized they had the emotional and financial backing to carry their pregnancy to term. On a micro-level, these centers successfully rescue thousands of families every single year. However, it is not only about saving a baby. Centers introduce people to Christ and offer education and mentoring to change the direction of the next generation. We need to truly come alongside mothers and fathers through mentorship and discipleship to teach them a better way. We ultimately need to save their souls from hell so they can parent their children to value life as God does. Only by transforming the human heart will we see an end to abortion among those who harbor no regard for the law.
Third, using the law as a teacher today requires an understanding of Biblical context, proper timing, and cultural readiness. Passing a law that drastically outpaces the moral consensus of the populace often provokes a public backlash in our country, leading voters to rise up and overturn those laws. We witnessed this exact dynamic in Missouri in 2024, when, after the state's near-total ban took effect in 2022, voters passed Amendment 3 and wrote abortion into our state constitution.
While Christians must always strive to enact righteous laws, simply passing a statute without sufficient public buy-in is often ultimately ineffective because it lacks sticking power in our country. This highlights the blessing and curse of living in a democratic republic: the morality of the people controls the morality of the laws, rather than the law teaching morality to all the people. This reality differs fundamentally from God's law described in Scripture, where Israel's law was established by God's authority and not by men. Because our government system is fundamentally different and established by the vote of men, we cannot make a direct one-to-one application of God's law to our current republic legislation. Many laws that are currently in existence cannot tutor us to live a righteous life. Therefore no one should look to the laws of their state or national government as a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ. Implying that Galatians 3:24 directly applies to our current civil and criminal law is false and will lead people astray. Nevertheless, if a law is to endure and successfully tutor our society in righteousness, a critical mass of the population who are governed by that law must agree with its moral standard for it to remain in effect. Therefore, timing is essential, and passing immediate legislation may not be the primary tool to shift public morality if the law cannot survive long enough to restrain or influence people's hearts.
None of this means laws are unnecessary. A law against murder cannot regenerate a murderer, yet we rightly keep it on the books. Law and gospel ministry are partners, and neither should be used to diminish the other. It is true that education and resources alone are not enough to end all abortion, but neither is merely passing a law. We need to show parents a better way. We need to teach them how to thrive and how to appreciate children as a blessing, rather than viewing them as an overwhelming burden. No single tactic will end all abortion. We need it all: the laws to establish justice and restrain evil, the physical support to remove the crisis, the call to repentance through the Gospel, and the discipleship to permanently change hearts and teach people the right way to live.
Penalties and Equal Protection
Claim 5: "Mainstream Pro-Life groups are hypocrites because they refuse to treat abortion as murder for the mother."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
If the unborn child is truly a person, they argue, the law cannot treat the child as a homicide victim while granting blanket immunity to everyone who knowingly takes part in the killing.
Is This Claim True?
Here, the Abolitionists bring up a valid point that those in the Pro-Life movement must honestly evaluate. For decades, some mainstream Pro-Life voices have insisted on a blanket narrative: the mother is always a victim of the abortion industry, and therefore should never face any legal punishment.
While many women are genuine victims of severe coercion, deception, or the industry itself, it is intellectually dishonest to claim that every mother who seeks an abortion is acting in ignorance. There are women who are fully aware of what they are doing. They boast about killing their baby to protesters outside clinics and post on social media about how glad they are to end the life of their unborn child for personal gain. These people are not victims of ignorance; they are acting out of cold self-interest.
Abolitionists are right to call out this duplicity. If a fetus in the womb is a person, the law should reflect that reality.
Finding the Right Solution
However, acknowledging this duplicity does not mean writing the law is simple. While Abolitionists rightfully demand equal protection, finding the exact legal formula to address all the nuances of pregnancy is challenging.
For instance, in standard criminal law, being coerced or threatened is rarely a valid legal defense for the premeditated murder of an innocent third party. If lawmakers were to simply apply standard murder statutes to abortion without any modifications, how would the legal system handle a young woman under intense, life-threatening coercion from an abusive partner? Some kind of concession in the law would need to be added for these circumstances.
Furthermore, the womb is a unique biological environment that prevents a flawless one-to-one comparison to a child outside the womb. In scenarios like an ectopic pregnancy, the baby cannot survive, and allowing the pregnancy to continue will cause the mother to die. This is not a hypothetical situation; it is a regular occurrence. In these tragic moments, there is no reason both the child and mother should die, and mothers need to be shielded from any false accusations while facing these life-threatening situations. In scenarios like this, doctors also must be legally protected to practice triage and save lives without the fear of facing murder charges. Such situations require specific legislation to thoroughly clarify the necessary protections, because mens rea (intent laws) and affirmative defenses do not fully address the situations. Some Abolitionist model bills attempt to address medical triage and ectopic pregnancy directly, and that is the right instinct. A genuine medical emergency involving two endangered patients is not the same as an elective abortion. Whatever the mechanism, the law must be written clearly enough that doctors are not afraid to act when a mother's life is at stake.
Many in the Pro-Life movement have made Abolitionists out to be people who want to put every mother who has an abortion in prison. However, the fight is not really about trying to put people in prison nor is it about retroactively punishing those who had an abortion, but it is about trying to protect the innocent going forward. It is about truly making it illegal for anyone, including mothers taking pills, to abort their child. It may require proper timing to prevent it from being quickly overturned, but we shouldn't stop until it is done. It will require care to find the best legal solution to addressing all the issues. Any righteous law must be crafted to protect unborn babies, shield mothers who truly are victims, and allow honest doctors to practice life-saving medicine.
Historical Check: The British Abolition of Slavery
Claim 6: "Historical slavery Abolitionists are our example of dedicated uncompromising fortitude to end evil laws."
Modern abortion abolitionists frequently draw inspiration from William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, and the British movement to end slavery. But a historical review of their tactics reveals they were masters of principled, incremental strategy.
- Abolition Society Founded - 1787
Focus shifted to public awareness and boycotting sugar produced by enslaved people.
- Slave Trade Act (Dolben's Act) Passes - 1788
Limits how many enslaved people a ship may carry for its size. It regulates the trade rather than banning it, and Wilberforce supports it.
- Foreign Slave Trade Act Passes - 1806
Bans British ships from supplying slaves to foreign colonies, cutting off a large share of the trade a year before full abolition of the trade.
- Slave Trade Act Passes - 1807
Bans the transport and trade of slaves on British ships, but does NOT ban the institution of slavery itself.
- Anti-Slavery Society Founded - 1823
The movement regrouped to focus on complete emancipation in the colonies.
- Slavery Abolition Act Passed - 1833
Abolishes slavery in most British colonies, but expressly excludes the territories of the East India Company, Ceylon, and St Helena, and introduces an "apprenticeship" phase meant to last four to six years.
- Full Freedom Granted - 1838
After a public campaign by abolitionists, apprenticeship ends early and full freedom is granted to the formerly enslaved in the colonies covered by the 1833 Act.
- Indian Slavery Act Passed - 1843
Slavery in British India, left out of the 1833 Act, is finally stripped of legal recognition.
Wilberforce and his allies spent 20 years fighting just to outlaw the Slave Trade (the 1807 Act). They did not pass a complete ban on owning slaves in 1807 because they didn't have the votes. Did Wilberforce say, "If we can't free every slave today, we won't pass a law stopping the ships"? No. They passed the 1807 Act, which saved hundreds of thousands of lives at sea, and then spent another 26 years fighting for the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Even the 1833 Act, the crowning achievement of the movement, was far from perfect. It left slavery standing in British India and other territories by name, and it forced the newly freed into years of "apprenticeship" that many abolitionists rightly denounced as slavery under another name. They did not respond by condemning the Act or those who voted for it. They celebrated the freedom it secured, called the remaining injustice what it was, and kept fighting until apprenticeship ended in 1838 and slavery in India was addressed in 1843.
Some Abolitionists answer that the 1807 Act only left the rest of slavery unresolved, while a law with exceptions positively authorizes injustice. But the 1833 Act did draw lines, naming territories its protection would not reach, and the historical abolitionists still counted it a victory. And as I explain in Claim 8, a law that takes protection away from no one and extends it to many does not create the injustice that remains. It inherits that injustice from the law it replaces.
The historical Abolitionists did not treat incremental legislation as treason. They treated every passed bill as a beachhead from which to launch the next attack on evil.
Cooperation with Non-Believers and Secular Authorities
Claim 7: "We cannot partner with secular politicians or anyone who does not share our full Christian gospel and complete abolitionist agenda."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
They want to ensure the church relies on God, not corrupt political systems, and they do not want to dilute the Gospel message.
Is This Claim True?
The civil government is not the Church. God established civil government (Romans 13) to restrain evil in a fallen world, regardless of whether the rulers are devout Christians.
We regularly partner with non-Christians in common-grace endeavors:
- You can hire an unbelieving contractor to build your home.
- You can partner with a secular doctor or surgeon to save your child's life.
- You rely on non-Christian firefighters and police officers to protect your neighborhood.
If a Christian can partner with a secular surgeon to save a child outside the womb, it is entirely logical, and morally good, to partner with secular legislators to pass a bill that saves 5,000 babies inside the womb this year, even if those legislators don't share your exact theological worldview.
Partnership stops when shared goals end. But refusing to co-belligerently save lives alongside anyone who agrees with us on a specific policy is not faithfulness. It is isolationism and divisive.
Many Abolitionists agree that cooperation with unbelievers is not the real problem. The boundary, they rightly say, is not who stands beside us but whether we are participating in wrongdoing. I agree. That is why the decisive question is whether voting for a law that protects many children, but not yet all, is participation in wrongdoing. That is the subject of the final claim.
Codifying Injustice or Reducing It?
Claim 8: "Voting for a law that protects some unborn children but makes exceptions for others writes partiality into law. It declares that the excluded children may be killed, and shows that you value them less."
Why Do Abolitionists Make This Claim?
Their concern is that a law protecting some children while expressly leaving others unprotected frames injustice by statute (Ps 94:20-21; Isa 10:1), violates the royal law of neighbor-love (James 2:8-9), and does evil so that good may come (Rom 3:8). The child conceived in rape is no less human, and a diagnosis does not make anyone less our neighbor.
Is This Claim True?
I agree with the principle behind this claim. If we were writing on a blank slate, with no abortion laws at all, and someone proposed a law saying some unborn children may be killed and others may not, it would be evil. That law would make it legal to kill people where it previously was not. The crime of the father does not change the humanity of the child (Ezek 18:20), and a diagnosis does not make anyone less human. Where I disagree is whether incremental laws actually do what this claim says they do.
Context Determines What a Law Establishes: This claim assumes that a law's moral character can be judged apart from the law it replaces. But we are not writing on a blank slate. In many places today, the law permits the killing of any unborn child up to viability, and sometimes beyond it, and many people are fighting hard to keep it that way. To judge a new law honestly, we have to ask what it changes.
A law that moves thousands of children from unprotected to protected, and moves no child from protected to unprotected, is not codifying injustice. The injustice was already codified. A law that removes part of the corruption without removing all of it is not establishing what was already established. It is simply recognizing that when you are dismantling an evil law, not everything gets cleaned up at once.
Abolitionists sometimes offer an illustration: imagine a society where children may legally be killed until age ten, and a new law protects children from five to ten while still permitting the killing of younger children. They ask what that law declares about the younger children. But in that world, the new law does not grant anyone permission to kill children under five. That permission already exists. The new law takes the permission away for the older children and leaves the younger children exactly where they were, with their protection as the next fight. To say the new law "authorizes" killing the younger children assigns to it something the old law already did.
What an Incremental Law Actually Changes: Picture a place where abortion is legal up to viability. A bill is proposed to protect unborn children from 12 weeks onward, with an exception for children conceived in rape. Does that bill take protection away from any child who has it today? It does not. Before the bill, the child conceived in rape has no protection. If the bill fails, that child still has none. A "no" vote does not protect them. It only keeps every other child unprotected along with them.
I wish bills like this had no exceptions. I grieve that the child conceived in rape would not yet be protected. But that exception is not why Christians like me would vote yes. We hold to God's standard for every one of these children while accepting the limits of what can be reformed in the law today. The 12-week bill does not single out children conceived in rape for abandonment. The existing law already abandoned them, along with every other unborn child. The bill rescues as many as it can reach, and the ones it cannot reach yet are the next ones we must fight for.
Doing Good, Not Evil: For the same reason, Romans 3:8 does not apply. Voting to protect children who are currently unprotected is not “doing evil so that good may come.” It is doing good. The evil that remains was there before the vote, and it will remain whether we vote yes or no. Some worry that such a law teaches the public that the excluded children matter less. But the current law already teaches that every unborn child may be killed. A law that protects more children teaches a better lesson than the one it replaces, and our continued work for the children it does not yet reach teaches the rest.
A Vote Is Not a Creed: This claim also assumes that what someone votes for is a one-to-one reflection of what they believe is perfectly right and just. But no genuine Christian looks to a fallen, man-made legal system as the standard of righteousness. We look to God's law and Christ. There is a vast difference between what Christians believe is righteous and what they believe can actually be enacted into law at a given moment in a fallen society. Supporting an incremental law is not a change in what believers define as righteous. It is a judgment about how much ground can be won right now.
Consider where the opposite logic leads. If voting for a law that protects some children proves you want the others to die, then voting against it, and leaving every unborn child unprotected, would prove you want all of them to die. That accusation would be absurd and unfair to Abolitionists, and the original accusation is just as unfair to pro-life Christians. We should judge one another's votes by what a law actually changes, and one another's hearts by what we actually by what we are ultimately trying to accomplish.
Conclusion: A Call to Work Together
Right now, it can feel like the Pro-Life movement and the Abolitionist movement are not even building toward the same outcome. Abolitionists often feel that mainstream Pro-Life advocates have settled for a permanent, compromised truce with abortion. Meanwhile, many in the Pro-Life movement feel that Abolitionists are demanding political impossibilities that end up sabotaging real, immediate gains. We cannot let these differences paralyze us while babies are still dying. To my Abolitionist brothers and sisters: we hear your call to uncompromising righteousness, but let us not burn down the bridges connecting us to our fellow laborers. To my Pro-Life brothers and sisters: let's not stop until we see an end to all abortion.
We also need to speak honestly about one another. I have seen Abolitionist material that claims again and again that the goal of the pro-life movement is to give mothers the right to kill their babies. I have also heard pro-life voices dismiss Abolitionists as "prosecutionists," as if their goal were to fill prisons with women. Both misrepresent people who are trying to save children. We can disagree sharply about strategy and still represent one another's positions accurately.
The call today is to partner with anyone who is willing and able to move the needle forward. We do not have to agree on the final, perfect legislative blueprint to lock arms and save the lives we can save today. If a law restricts abortion and reduces the bloodshed without taking protection away from any child who has it, we should unite to pass it. Then, we must continue moving that needle by staying at the table, having honest conversations, and helping everyone at that table come to share God's heart about abortion.
To my Abolitionist brothers and sisters who agree that abolition may come in steps: what steps would you lay out? Whatever happens with any single law, the children conceived in rape, the children with a hard diagnosis, and the children lost to mail-order abortion pills all still need protection. Let's find the steps we can take together.
Ending abortion will require all of us doing our unique parts. We need the people to continuously call the culture and the church higher. We need the legislative advocate to navigate the political system and secure the legal victories that protect thousands of lives right now. We need the educators, the pregnancy centers, and the prayer warriors. Let's stop firing inward at the people standing next to us on the front lines. Let's partner where we can, challenge each other where we must, take every inch of ground the Lord allows us to take today, and refuse to rest until abortion is a thing of the past.