‘The New Abolitionism’: How A Small Band Of Oklahoma Christians Is Shifting The Pro-Life Paradigm

Ben ZeisloftMay 9, 2022

The United States was taken by surprise earlier this month when a copy of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked from within the Supreme Court.

Yet long before the leaked opinion, a small group of Christians in Oklahoma was spearheading a national effort to abolish and criminalize abortion — with or without the Supreme Court’s consent — by resurrecting the movement that led to the abolition of slavery nearly two centuries ago.

In an interview with The Daily Wire, Free The States team members T. Russell Hunter, James Silberman, and Sam Riley explained how their work is advancing a paradigm shift that will lead to the end of abortion in the United States.

‘We Are Not To Compromise’

Hunter first encountered the writings of nineteenth-century abolitionists — including Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Frederick Douglass — during his doctoral research in 2010. He originally intended his research to debunk the notion that Darwin put forward his theory of evolution out of a desire to end slavery.

“As I read the works of these abolitionists, I noticed not only that their views of man and how to deal with great evils — they treated the slave trade and slavery as national sins and called for total and immediate heartfelt repentance — was very from the naturalized ethics of Darwin, but actually quite challenging to my own conscience,” he explained.

Hunter was also inspired by the dedication of the abolitionists: “I was not an atheist or relativist and I believed in the existence of an actual good and evil, and I was even a Christian, but I was not like any of the abolitionists I was reading. These were bold, uncompromising men and women who stood up in their cultures and demanded the abolition of widely tolerated and legally protected evils — oftentimes to the detriment of their own worldly success, comfort, and cultural appreciation and acceptance.”

He continued, “I was a comfortable Christian and in no way seeking to serve my God in loving any of my most neglected or mistreated neighbors. Namely, I was doing nothing to fight for the rights of my preborn neighbors, and God used reading the abolitionists of slavery to show me that.”

As Hunter sought to engage on abortion, he quickly realized that the core strategy used by the abolitionists — namely, calling for the immediate end of state-sanctioned evil instead of proposing laws that gradually chipped away at it — was largely rejected by the pro-life movement.

“Unlike the abolitionists of American slavery, pro-life leaders focused on secular and incremental appeals and purposefully avoided calling the culture to repent or even marking out abortion as sin like earlier abolitionists had decried slavery,” Hunter said. “The abolitionists of slavery had fought the gradualists of their day and eventually demonstrated that immediatism was the far superior biblical and practical approach to removing grave evils in a culture rebelling against God, but this point seemed to have been completely missed by pro-life leaders and thinkers.”

Examples of this incremental approach abound. Currently, the most common pro-life bills include gestational age restrictions, “born-alive” protection acts, Down syndrome bans, and medical ordinances for abortion clinics — all of which leave entire subsets of preborn babies unprotected due to their age, level of development, or circumstances of conception, and therefore failing to provide human beings with equal protection under the law.

Hunter initially started an “Abolitionist Society” in Norman, Oklahoma, after he failed to identify a pro-life group that subscribed to the immediatism once favored by slavery abolitionists.

“There are many lessons to be learned by studying the words and deeds of Garrison, Tubman, and others, because we can see what worked well for them and what turned out to harm their cause, but the Word of God really is our guidebook — just as it was for most of them. We don’t decide what to do and believe based on the actions of men and women in history, but by the Word of God… which really is quite clear when it comes to the removal of evils and how we are not to compromise or show partiality in the cause of justice.”

‘Our Messaging And Tactics Come From God’s Word’

Today, Hunter leads Free The States — which fosters a “paradigm shift away from incremental, pro-life regulationism to uncompromising immediate abolitionism.” According to Free The States communications director James Silberman, the organization and the movement it spearheads is distinctly founded upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.

“Abortion is sin, and the cure to sin is the gospel,” he explained. “In a culture where one in four men and women have participated in abortion, and where the remaining three-fourths do little to rescue their preborn neighbors, repentance is the only solution. Summed up briefly, to be an abolitionist is to bring the gospel into conflict with the culture of death. The curse of sin affects all of creation — but God, through His gospel, promises to restore all of creation. The movement to abolish abortion must be gospel-centered, and the gospel must extend as far as the curse is found.”

Likewise, abolitionism forgoes political expediency in favor of trusting in God’s providence.

“Abolitionists do not make pragmatic calculations. We do not poll test our messaging. We do not use focus groups to figure out what bills we support. We look at what God says in His Word, and we proclaim that to the culture and to our governing officials, bidding them to repent and become abolitionists. Of course, we want to have expertise about the political process, but ultimately, our messaging and tactics come from God’s Word.”

Silberman added that abolitionists equip local churches to end abortion.

“If abortion is sin, and the gospel is the solution to sin, then whose obligation is it to abolish abortion? The Church,” he said. “The Church must lead the charge in the battle to abolish abortion. In the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus teaches that religious people will often neglect a neighbor in need, and that they sin in so doing. In the modern American context, there is almost no one who does not pass by the places of murder on a daily basis. If there is not an abortion mill in your area, there is a hospital or OB/GYN office that performs abortions, or a pharmacy that sells abortifacient drugs. Child sacrifice is all around us. Looking away is not an option.”

Silberman again emphasized the Bible as the foundation of abolitionism.

“Fighting child sacrifice is more foundationally a spiritual battle than a political one, and in spiritual battles, the marching orders come from God’s Word, not from pollsters and worldly wise political operatives. His Word is the sword we bear against the evil of abortion.”

In accordance with Biblical principles, abolitionists say they will not support legislation that falls short of ensuring equal protection for all preborn children without exception or compromise.

“Writing a law that allows for the murder of some children is unprincipled in that it violates God’s Word, but also the Constitution — which mandates that every state provide the equal protection of the law to all people,” Silberman explained. “A bill that compromises with God’s Word cannot be supported from God’s Word or the Constitution, meaning that we’ve violated our foundations and laid down our two best weapons in the fight against abortion.”

‘The Overton Window Has Shifted’

Since its founding over a decade ago, Free The States and adjacent organizations have shifted the political equation in Oklahoma and beyond.

In 2016, former Oklahoma State Senator Joseph Silk was the first to file a bill that abolished abortion — a move that caused him grief from Republican leadership, according to Silberman. “But his courage blazed the trail for legislators in more than a dozen other states to follow his lead over the past six years, with abolition bills popping up in new states every session.”

In that same time, several churches became involved in regular sidewalk counseling at Oklahoma’s abortion facilities, as well as political advocacy at the state capitol. End Abortion Now — another abolitionist group that works closely with Free The States — now provides abortion ministry training to over 800 local churches across the United States.

Silberman noted that Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, signed nine pro-life bills in 2021 — complete with three ceremonial signings. The Governor also “attended by a ‘who’s who’ of pro-life celebrities to tout how amazing a year it was for preborn children.” Nevertheless, the Oklahoma Senate’s health and human services committee voted against a bill that would have abolished abortion, “ensuring that the murder of Oklahoma preborn children would continue.”

The Oklahoma Legislature “passed more pro-life bills in one year than many pro-life states have passed in 49 years,” Silberman observed. “The Republican pro-life establishment is going into overdrive to try to keep their base after we have exposed them as the people keeping abortion legal. The Overton window has shifted dramatically. Eventually, they’re going to run out of do-nothing pro-life bills to pass and they’ll have nothing to do but abolish abortion.”

Indeed, Silberman said that “When abolitionists go to the capitol, they aren’t there to flatter legislators or give them roses because they passed an incremental bill. They are there to call their governing officials to repentance for not abolishing abortion.”

“Not that we’re going to yell and scream or anything,” he added. “There are winsome ways to go about it. But abolitionism is about repentance. The Church needs to repent of abortion apathy, the culture needs to repent of practicing child sacrifice, and governing officials need to repent of regulating child sacrifice instead of establishing justice.”

Free The States has managed to become a national force through podcasts, rallies, and conferences — all with branding that reflects the political cartoons used by nineteenth-century abolitionists. Last summer, Free The States successfully led the effort to make abolitionism the official position of the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Free The States also helped to file an amicus brief in relation to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the case that prompted Justice Alito to write that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start” and “must be overruled.” And days ago, a bill to protect preborn children in accordance with preexisting homicide law was approved by the Louisiana House of Representatives’ criminal justice committee — the first such bill to advance in a state legislature.

‘What Shall We Abolish Next?’

Free The States media director Sam Riley noted that although the pro-life movement remains “vehemently opposed to abolitionism,” many influencers are slowly acquiescing to its tenets.

“When abolitionists first came on the scene, most of the pro-life movement claimed to be secular and certainly did not have the gospel on their website or a part of any of their work,” Riley explained. “Some organizations even made volunteers sign agreements to keep the gospel out of it unless someone initiated a religious conversation. When I worked for a pro-life group, a coworker of mine was fired for attending an abolitionist conference, which was a big part of the reason I quit working in the pro-life movement entirely. That pro-life group and the pro-life movement in general entertains and allows a lot of disagreement in their ranks over a range of different issues, but when it comes to abolitionism, they are unequivocally opposed to it.”

Nevertheless, Riley said that many pro-lifers “have been pulled closer to abolitionists over the years while pretending abolitionists had nothing to do with it.” Pro-life activist Abby Johnson, for example, has recently considered the nullification of Roe v. Wade and defended criminalization of all those involved in abortion, including the mother — both of which are facets of abolition bills.

“The paradigm is shifting in our favor towards abolitionism, and that is in large part due to organizations like Free the States and other abolitionist organizations across the country,” Riley remarked.

“The movement began as a small, ragtag band of college students in Norman, Oklahoma, calling the culture and the church to repentance, but it has come a long way,” Silberman added. “The abolitionist movement isn’t going to stop. All Christians throughout all of history are tasked with bringing the gospel into conflict with the evils and idols of their age. Presently, child sacrifice is the greatest evil plaguing our society.”

“But like Wilberforce, when we’ve abolished that, the question will be, ‘What shall we abolish next?’”

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.