I think the point is the game mechanics are somewhat lacking to support that role.
If you blow up the ships carrying the slaves it doesn't help them
If you pirate them, you are left with Stolen cargo the S&R agent wont help with
If you buy them from the slave markets to bring back to free somewhere the S&R agent wont help with that either
And the latest mission system has lost the flavour text for emancipation missions which used to exist.
Still feel free to say that if you aren't blowing up slaves in the slavers' ships then you aren't serious about being anti slavery.
Yes, I know the point is that the game lacks an anti-slavery mechanic. My point is that the game lacks an anti-slavery mechanic because no one takes anti-slavery seriously enough to actually do anything about it with the mechanics that
are available: i.e. rigorously attacking all slave-carrying ships, and acquiring [Imperial] Slaves and discarding them in starports. If enough players regularly attacked slavers, and discarded Slaves in starports, perhaps Frontier would consider introducing a mechanic to cater for them.
Being anti-slavery has nothing to do with helping slaves, at least not in the first instance. It's about demonstrating that slavery in any form is totally unacceptable. In the first instance slaves are perfectly content to remain in bondage, since it is the safest course for them, or else they would liberate themselves. Thereby they continue to support their masters and perpetuate slavery, and nothing ever changes. The only way things ever change, is when the slaves learn that their subhuman bondage is totally unacceptable to human beings. And the only way they will learn that, is when they see
that they will be destroyed along with their captors if they continue to accept their bondage. There simply is no other way.
Besides which, any Slaves surviving anti-slavery attacks on slave ships as loose or jettisoned cargo can be scooped, and taken to a starport and simply discarded. Or Slaves can be bought and simply discarded. No one's ever bothered to find out what happens to the markets when there's a run of organized anti-slaving players, all buying and discarding all available Slaves everywhere from under the noses of the slave traders.
So you see, the anti-slavery mechanics
are there in placeholder form. But that's how they stay because no one uses them. And no one uses them partly because of arguments like yours i.e. if you rescue slaves you might get a criminal record for stealing slaves, and you don't get paid by S&R for the slaves you rescue, which is just another way of saying: 'I can't rescue slaves because then I can't sell them as Slaves and slave trading systems might put a bounty on my head for being anti-slavery'. Well there are mechanics for that too. Buy the Slaves from a slave dealer, then you don't get a criminal record for stealing them. Sell them to another slave dealer and you get paid for them.
Feel free to argue that Imperial slaves aren't really slaves, or that blowing up slaves isn't helping to stop slavery, but don't pretend that you're anti-slavery and it's the game's fault that you can't do anything about it.