Disgraceful! Pro-Life Establishment Lies About Abolitionist Candidate Warren Hamilton

Warren Hamilton is running for Oklahoma 7th Senate District on a platform to completely abolish abortion. He is not running to compromise with it. He is not running to delay abolition with more regulations that do nothing to establish justice. He is not running to help the establishment get away with not abolishing abortion by passing worthless “pro-life victories” which are little more than fundraising and vote-gathering ploys. Warren Hamilton is running to abolish abortion as murder.

This isn’t just rhetoric for Warren. He and his wife Sherrie have been active abolitionists since 2017 when they learned about the movement. Warren passionately hates abortion and is running to abolish it.

Whether it be at the local livestock auction or at a moderated debate on the news, abolishing abortion is typically the first thing Warren talks about.

On Thursday, a mailer was delivered to Senate District 7 voters from dark money organization Advance Oklahoma Fund dishonestly claiming, “We simply can’t trust Warren Hamilton to fight for the unborn.” The mailer told voters to “Use your voice to speak for those who don’t have a voice” by voting for Warren’s opponent, Larry Boggs.

The rationale for their claim is the fact that Warren did not fill out Oklahomans for Life’s (OFL) survey while Boggs got 100%. What the mailer doesn’t mention is that OFL has been the primary opposition to the abolition of abortion ever since The Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act was first introduced in 2016. To get 100% on OFL’s survey, as Boggs did, a candidate has to agree to oppose the Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act and support legislation that allows for human beings conceived in rape to be murdered. Warren did not fill out OFL’s immoral survey because he is running to abolish abortion.

The other argument made against Warren is that he would not have voted for various pro-life compromises. This part is true, but it’s not because Warren supports abortion; it’s because Warren understands the games that the pro-life politicians in Oklahoma City play.

Every year since 2016, The Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act has been denied and the Oklahoma State Senate has passed pro-life compromises in its place. These compromises are what allow pro-life politicians to get away with keeping abortion legal.

For instance, when Senators Greg Treat and Jason Smalley (both pro-life Republicans) denied SB13 a hearing in 2019, there was a massive outcry against them. Christians all over the state were outraged. Responding to the outrage, Treat authored a pro-life trigger bill and helped pass three other incremental pro-life bills, raising the total for Oklahoma to 25 pro-life laws (abortion regulations) on the books. None of these bills brought us any closer to abolishing abortion. In fact, all of them served to further entrench the misconception that Oklahoma is bound by the supreme court’s arbitrary opinion that murdering a preborn child should be legal and thereby made it more difficult to abolish abortion.

What these bills did accomplish, though, was help Treat save face. The outrage against him was somewhat quelled. These bills preserved Treat’s pro-life reputation in the minds of those who did not understand what he was doing. Jason Smalley, who resigned just ahead of the 2020 session, was not able to retain his pro-life reputation as Oklahomans inundated his district with fliers and door hangers and put up billboards around OKC making it known that he kept abortion legal. Treat was only able to get away with preventing abortion’s abolition by authoring and passing incremental bills. These bills accomplish nothing while communicating to the culture the insidious idea that we are bound by every arbitrary court opinion up to and including orders to allow mass murder.

Furthermore, incremental compromise bills teach people dehumanizing misinformation about preborn human beings. Free the States lobbyist Russell Hunter discovered this when he was outside a killing center in Norman trying to talk to abortion-minded mothers and fathers in 2016. After engaging one young woman who was going in for an abortion, she told Russell that she was pro-life, but that the abortion was okay because the baby was too young to feel pain. Where did she learn that? From the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act which explicitly codifies into law the practice of murdering babies who can’t feel pain. While meeting with Ohio State Senator Andrew Brenner’s office, I discovered the same thing. After presenting to Brenner’s aide the importance of introducing a bill of abolition, the aide responded, “This is interesting, but it’s Senator Brenner’s personal religious conviction that life begins at a heartbeat. He’s very proud that we just passed the Heartbeat Bill and he has been working to pass that bill since the beginning.” Where did he learn that ridiculous and dehumanizing nonsense that life begins at a heartbeat? He learned it from the heartbeat bill and pro-life messaging supporting it.

Incremental pro-life bills are not simply less good than abolition bills. They are counterproductive. They are the excuse politicians use to not abolish abortion. They instill in the culture dehumanizing misinformation about the preborn and the idolatrous idea that we owe unconditional submission to the supreme court. In conservative states incremental bills and the incremental ideology held by pro-life politicians are quite literally all that is standing in the way of abolition bills being passed, signed, and enforced. In a state like Oklahoma where pro-life Republicans hold super-majorities in the Senate and the House, it’s not that we cannot pass a bill abolishing abortion because we do not have the votes, it’s that we could pass a bill abolishing abortion but choose to pass pro-life bills regulating abortion instead.

This has been a common tactic to delay abolition throughout history. In their famous 1833 Declaration of Sentiments, the American Anti-Slavery Society said the following on the matter of compromise: “We regard, as delusive, cruel and dangerous, any scheme of expatriation which pretends to aid, either directly or indirectly, in the emancipation of the slaves, or to be a substitute for the immediate and total abolition of slavery.” Incremental compromises are exactly the substitute being rebuked.

Abolitionist movement leader William Lloyd Garrison said similarly, “Come what may – cost what it may – inscribe on the banner which you unfurl to the breeze, as your religious and political motto – ‘NO COMPROMISE WITH SLAVERY!’”  There are innumerable principled and pragmatic reasons why Garrison was correct. May we similarly proclaim “NO COMPROMISE WITH CHILD SACRIFICE!”

Elizabeth Heyrick, a British abolitionist of slavery, wrote a pamphlet entitled Immediate, Not Gradual Abolition, one the most compelling rebukes of compromise with monstrous societal evils ever written:

“The enemies of slavery have hitherto ruined [the abolitionist] cause by the senseless cry of gradual emancipation. It is marvelous that the wise and the good should have suffered themselves to have been imposed upon by this wily artifice of the slave holder, for with him must the project of gradual emancipation have first originated. The slave holder knew very well that his prey would be secure, so long as the abolitionists could be cajoled into a demand for gradual instead of immediate abolition. He knew very well, that the contemplation of a gradual emancipation, would beget a gradual indifference to emancipation itself. He knew very well, that even the wise and the good, may, by habit and familiarity, be brought to endure and tolerate almost any thing…

“He knew very well, that the faithful delineation of the horrors of West Indian slavery, would produce such a general insurrection of sympathetic and indignant feeling; such abhorrence of the oppressor, such compassion for the oppressed, as must soon have been fatal to the whole system… Our example might have spread from kingdom to kingdom, from continent to continent, and the slave trade, and slavery, might by this time, have been abolished all the world over:

‘A sacrifice of a sweet savour,’ might have ascended to the Great Parent of the Universe, ‘His kingdom might have come, and his will (thus far) have been done on earth, as it is in Heaven.’

“But this GRADUAL ABOLITION, has been the grand marplot of human virtue and happiness; the very masterpiece of satanic policy. By converting the cry for immediate, into gradual emancipation, the prince of slave holders, ‘transformed himself, with astonishing dexterity, into an angel of light,’ and thereby ‘deceived the very elect.’ He saw very clearly, that if public justice and humanity, especially, if Christian justice and humanity, could be brought to demand only a gradual extermination of the enormities of the slave system; if they could be brought to acquiesce, but for one year, or for one month, in the slavery of our African brother, in robbing him of all the rights of humanity, and degrading him to a level with the brutes; that then, they could imperceptibly be brought to acquiesce in all this for an unlimited duration.”

The key to keeping abortion legal is to delay its abolition with a never-ending stream of incremental “victories” to soothe the consciences of the public and to quell the righteous outrage which would otherwise be fatal to the whole abortion system. We must not acquiesce another year, another month, another day. We must faithfully and uncompromisingly bring the truth of God’s word and the light of the Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ into conflict with the enormous evil of the abortion holocaust. Warren Hamilton understands this. His opponent does not. His opponent is a part of the system providing the never-ending stream of worthless “victories” that serve to delay the abolition of abortion.

As for the three pieces of legislation referred to in the mailer, Warren would be correct to oppose them.

SB1721 – The Unborn Person Equality Act

This bill begins with some good language about making unborn humans people under law, but the problem is that the ending of Section 2 Part C renders any otherwise productive aspects of the bill worthless.

“…[subject to] decisional interpretations thereof by the United States Supreme Court and specific provisions to the contrary in the Oklahoma Statutes and the Oklahoma Constitution.”

In other words, this bill establishes that life begins at conception if the supreme court agrees that life begins at conception. It establishes that there is a right to life and equal protection if the supreme court agrees that there is a right to life and equal protection. It establishes that Oklahoma has a Tenth Amendment right to stand up to federal overreach if the federal government agrees that Oklahoma has the right to stand up against federal overreach, (which defeats the entire purpose of standing up against federal overreach in the first place). In other words, the bill establishes nothing because the federal courts have affirmed and reaffirmed their disagreement with all of this 37 times over.

Because of its obsequiousness toward the federal judiciary, SB1721 would accomplish nothing and is based on the fallacious (and sinful) idea that the supreme court is due our unconditional submission. Warren would be correct to oppose this bill.

SB1728 – The Unborn Person Wrongful Death Act

This is not a bill to ban abortion. It does not do a single thing to establish justice for preborn children. SB1728 allows the mother who had the abortion or the grandparents of the murdered child to sue the abortionist if the abortionist violates an abortion regulation.

Language in this bill relating to the “unborn person” is good language, but, tragically, is used schizophrenically. If the unborn child really is a person, why doesn’t SB1728 treat them as a person? If you’re going to call a bill “the Unborn Person Wrongful Death Act,” logically, that should be a bill to treat unborn children like all the rest of us. But SB1728 absolutely does not treat unborn human beings like people. Senate Bill 1728 fully affirms the legality of the practice of murdering unborn children. It simply provides the abortionist with a few hoops to jump through to make the unborn person’s death rightful.

On March 9th, Senator David Bullard, the author of SB1728, made a shocking admission about his bill on the Senate floor. Responding to a question from Senator Joseph Silk, Bullard said not only is providing a checklist for abortionists all his bill does, but further, he admitted his belief that providing abortionists a pre-murder checklist is the best possible way to protect preborn children.

SB1728 is, of course, not the best way to protect unborn children. It’s a fundamentally unjust piece of legislation that is being used as a substitute for abolition. Abolishing abortion is the best way to protect unborn children. Warren will fight tenaciously for the abolition of abortion. His opponent will not.

HB 1396 – Ban on Sex-Selection Abortion

This bill makes it illegal to have an abortion if the mother says she is aware of the sex of the child. Parents are typically first offered information about the sex of the child when the baby is 18-21 weeks. Abortion is already illegal in Oklahoma after 20 weeks, meaning the bill has no point.

All three of these bills would fail to abolish abortion. All three of them either already have or will soon be used as a substitute for The Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act. All three of them should be opposed.

The establishment is flailing with absurd attack mailers like this one because Warren has a real chance to unseat Boggs and introduce a bill to abolish abortion in the State Senate. OK State Senators have faced huge public backlash for not passing The Abolition of Abortion in Oklahoma Act since the bill was first introduced in 2016, and the backlash has escalated hugely in 2019 and 2020. With abolitionist Joseph Silk leaving the Senate to run for Congress, the establishment is hoping avoid having another Joseph Silk in the Senate. Candidates like Warren Hamilton, Kaity Keith, Christian Ford, and Carisa Roberson (who we have endorsed) are a threat to the establishment’s ambitions to keep abortion legal without someone on the Senate floor to hold their feet to the fire on abolition.

Don’t be fooled by the establishment’s use of a dark money group to attempt to deceive you. Larry Boggs is running to regulate abortion. Warren Hamilton is running to abolish it.