Refuting A.J. Hurley's Incrementalism
The Debates
The seven day period of May 9th to May 16th saw three high-level debates between abortion abolitionists (immediatists) and incrementalists (regulationists). The first, and most watched of these debates took place between Jeff Durbin of End Abortion Now, and Samuel Sey, who blogs at slowtowrite.com. The second debate also featured Samuel Sey debating Virgil Walker of G3 Ministries. The third, and last debate was between Ben Zeisloft, editor at the Sentinel, and A.J. Hurley, Manager of Outreach at the White Rose Resistance.1
The strategy of the incrementalists, Samuel Sey, and A.J. Hurley, consisted in poking at inconsistencies in the abolitionist approach. In the first debate, Samuel poised a hypothetical scenario, where a bill of equal protection was introduced in a state that upheld the death penalty. Samuel asked Jeff if he would support the bill. The catch was that this bill of equal protection excluded capital punishment as a penalty. This hypothetical scenario proved to be the most contentious part of the debate. However, Samuel only teased out a less-developed argument against abolition that A.J. Hurley later presented in the final debate. It is to Hurley’s arguments that we now turn.
Hurley’s Arguments
In his debate, Hurley unfurled two main arguments:
Some incremental, or regulationist bills, like heartbeat bills, save lives. Thus, we should support those bills.
Abolition bills that do not meet the standards of Biblical justice (Biblical requirements for the justice system and for penology) are also unjust.
At the end of the debate, Hurley tellingly said, “[I]t’s not that unrighteous incrementalism is the case, it’s that it's inevitable. It’s not that it's unjust, it’s inevitable.” Hurley contends that it is not possible, in this age, to end a political evil without acting contrary to Biblical justice. In his closing statement, Hurley said, “Any time you try to end a political evil, you’re going to be indirectly sanctioning some other type of evil, almost all the time, in an evil age.” It is this underlying premise that enables Hurley to reject Biblical commands that prohibit partiality and injustice and adopt his own strategy in engaging these political evils. In this article, I want to briefly address Hurley’s first argument and then spend the remainder of the time addressing Hurley’s second argument.
Rebuttal #1
In his first argument, Hurley argues that we can support incremental bills in order to save as many lives as we can. The abolitionist response is that we cannot support that which God hates. Incremental bills are regulatory bills, meaning they regulate the abortion industry in a similar fashion to how healthcare or food might be regulated. These types of bills, either by implicit2 or explicit connotation, specify when, where, and how a preborn child might be murdered. These bills fail to establish justice, and they show partiality towards those preborn image bearers by intentionally excluding them from legal protection. These bills are unjust, and an abomination to God who says, “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality…Justice, and only justice, you shall follow” (Deut 16:19–20).
Hurley acknowledges that these bills do not meet the Biblical standard, and yet, because of his premise, does not believe that this invalidates his support for them. Our rebuttal would be merely to point out the inconsistency here. Does Hurley not indict himself on this point? What is Hurley’s standard by which he is operating? He acknowledges that there is a Biblical standard, and that these bills do not meet that standard, and yet he is content to operate contrary to this Biblical standard. He ends up serving as a standard to himself, and he justifies this in light of his premise. But far be it from us to do what is right in our own eyes (Judges 17:6, 21:25)––no, we have a King who has given us His word and has told us how to live.
Revisiting Argument #2
One of the foundational claims of abolitionists is that abolition is consistent with Biblical justice. Hurley, however, seeks to undermine those claims by decrying abolition bills for failing to provide Biblical justice. While I’m sure that this is initially confusing to many readers, let me offer a quote from Hurley himself:
Equal protection bills (which I wholeheartedly support) fail in two ways:
They do not establish justice for the murdered fatherless.
They sanction injustice towards those who kill them.3
The justice that Hurley refers to in #1 for the murdered is capital punishment for the murderers, and the injustice that Hurley refers to in #2 is anything less than capital punishment.
Let me attempt to put Hurley’s argument into a syllogism:
Biblical justice for the murdered is capital punishment for their murderers (Gen 9:6, Exod 21:12–14, Lev 24:17–22, Num 35:30–31).
Anything less than #1 is unjust.
Thus, Equal Protection bills which do not require capital punishment for murder are unjust.
Again, Hurley is putting forth this argument to undermine abolition and to justify an incremental approach. So, where does Hurley go amiss?
Rebuttal #2
When Samuel Sey put forth his hypothetical to Jeff Durbin in their debate, Durbin’s response was that Sey was making a categorical error by confusing criminology with penology. This is the same categorical error that Hurley is making. In regards to criminology, an abolition bill establishes abortion as a crime; as prenatal homicide. The bill does this by including “preborn individual” into the definition of “persons” within the state’s legal code. In regards to penology, an abolition bill thus applies the penalties in the state’s homicide code to prenatal homicide.
Although related, criminology and penology are distinct categories. Granted that the penal system is not perfect, there is no inherent injustice within abolition bills. They establish correct criminology for abortion. The hope is that our penal system can be reformed to be in perfect unity with that of Scripture. But all that Hurley proves is that there is injustice in another part of the law.4
Now, Hurley would respond and say that the separation of the categories is a logical fallacy. He gives various hypotheticals in an attempt to validate this claim. These hypotheticals can be boiled down to two kinds:
Where the penalty is too severe (and/or due process is absent).
Where the penalty is not severe enough.
Since his second kind of hypothetical is essentially his argument in miniature, we’ll focus our attention on his first kind of hypothetical. This type of hypothetical is essentially this: “If the penalty for stealing is death, then it would be wrong for us to criminalize stealing.” However, this is totally unlike the case of an abolition bill. Hurley’s argument all along has been that an abolition bill fails the standard of Biblical justice; here, his hypothetical is a scenario where criminalization exceeds the standard of Biblical justice.5
At the heart of it, Hurley’s argument is essentially, “no bill can truly cover every aspect of what justice should look like, therefore all actions are on the table.”6 We reject this whole-heartedly. The word of God lays out clear standards that we can use to evaluate our actions. These standards include the prohibition of partiality (Lev 19:15, Deut 1:17, 16:19, Prov 18:5), injustice (Exod 23:2, Deut 27:19, Ps 82:2) and the shedding of innocent blood (Exod 20:13, Jer 22:23).7 In addition, these standards can only be upheld in the call of immediate abolition. If, in all our efforts in the pursuit of abolition, we do not call for the immediate abolition of abortion, then we delay justice and delay obedience (cf., Ps 119:59–60). When these standards are violated, then our actions are iniquitous and no Christian is permitted to partake in those.
When we say that abolition bills are just, we mean that they show no partiality, and that they end the shedding of innocent blood. When Hurley says that abolition bills are unjust, he means that they fail to reach perfection in all areas of life. But this is not what it means for something to be unjust. When we say something is unjust we mean that it codifies partiality in the law. A just bill to Hurley is something that exhaustively meets all of God’s standards.8 This fails to reckon with the reality of the fallen world in which we live, and our nature as finite creatures with finite resources. Working within the imperfection of the justice system cannot be called “unjust” in the same way that regulating murder is to be called “unjust.”
Hurley’s Deflection
Hurley’s purpose in attacking abolition bills is to justify his incremental approach. However, an abolition bill which is operating in a justice system that is less than perfect is a far cry from putting forth an incremental bill that sanctions partiality and regulates murder. There is no inherent injustice within abolition bills, but there is inherent injustice within incremental legislation. Hurley wants to move the focus away from the glaring problems with his incremental approach, which treats the abortion industry like the healthcare industry, something that needs to be regulated; or something we need to do away with gradually (not how we treat a crime or a sin); and which shows unbiblical partiality. Readers must be careful not to get caught up in Hurley’s hypotheticals and miss Hurley’s deflection. Hurley is not able to justify his support of unlawful legislation. Abolitionists oppose iniquity; Hurley supports it in legislation.
The Way Forward
In his concluding statement, Hurley posits that we are faced with either “philosophical political purity…[or]...getting your hands dirty in dealing with an unjust system.” This is a false portrayal of the choice that lies before us. Christians don’t have to get their “hands dirty” in fighting the great evil of abortion. Christians don’t have to support unjust legislation that is wicked in the eyes of God. Christians can strive against abortion with “purity” of heart, because God has spoken on how we can respond to abortion in a way that honors him. We believe that this response is well summarized in the Five Tenets of Abolition.
In attacking abolition, Hurley did solely that. But he failed to put forward a Biblical, well-developed, and comprehensive approach in favor of incrementalism. He failed to posit a Biblical standard for fighting injustice. The issue is that when there is no divine standard, then it befalls on man to make his own standard. This, perhaps, is the most glaring issue of all in Hurley’s attack on abolition. No, the choice is not between “philosophical political purity…[or]...getting your hands dirty in dealing with an unjust system.” Rather, it is between a Christian response to abortion, and a man-centered response to abortion. Let the reader decide which one to embrace.
1 Readers can check out this helpful thread on X by @realProject1815 that briefly summarizes each of these debates.
2 This is intentional language that I use. Hurley, in response, would likely bring up a bill that does not explicitly, in its language, sanction the murder of other preborn children (i.e. preborn children without a heartbeat in a heartbeat bill). However, this argument fails because the legislation implicitly makes a distinction between which image-bearers of God are receiving equal protection. You cannot argue personhood from fertilization and then only apply protection to some image-bearers.
3 On X, @AJHurleyLife (May 18th, 2024).
4 I am indebted to Sam Riley for this language.
5 Nathan Herr, a board member of End Abortion Ohio interacted with A.J. on X concerning this hypothetical. It is worth quoting Herr at length here: “We intuitively understand that executing a person who should not be executed is a bigger problem than for stealing to go unpunished - violation of a humans being vs violation of property. Thus in that society, reducing the punishment for stealing would be the priority”. @nathan_ps73 (May 20th, 2024).
6 I am indebted to Bradley Pierce for this observation.
7 At this point, Bradley Pierce helped me.
8 Ibid.
