The 1844 United States presidential election was the 15th quadrennial presidential election, held from Friday, November 1 to Wednesday, December 4, 1844. Democrat James K. Polk defeated Whig Henry Clay in a close contest turning on the controversial issues of slavery and the annexation of the Republic of Texas.
The gag rule was a series of rules that forbade the raising, consideration, or discussion of slavery in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1836 to 1844.
The abortion debate is the ongoing controversy surrounding the moral, legal, and religious status of induced abortion. In English-speaking countries, the sides involved in the debate are the self-described "pro-choice" and "pro-life" movements. Pro-choice emphasizes the woman's choice whether to terminate a pregnancy. Pro-life proposes the right of the embryo or fetus to gestate to term and be born. Both terms are considered loaded in mainstream media, where terms such as "abortion rights" or "anti-abortion" are generally preferred. Each movement has, with varying results, sought to influence public opinion and to attain legal support for its position.
The Mexico City policy, sometimes referred to by its critics as the global gag rule, is a United States government policy that blocked U.S. federal funding for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that provided abortion counseling or referrals, advocated to decriminalize abortion, or expanded abortion services. When in effect, the Mexico City policy is a U.S. government policy that requires foreign non-governmental organizations to certify that they will not "perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning" with non-U.S. funds as a condition for receiving U.S. global family planning assistance and, as of January 23, 2017, any other U.S. global health assistance, including U.S. global HIV and maternal and child health (MCH) assistance.
Prior restraint is censorship imposed, usually by a government or institution, on expression, that prohibits particular instances of expression. It is in contrast to censorship which establishes general subject matter restrictions and reviews a particular instance of expression only after the expression has taken place.
The power of the purse is the ability of one group to manipulate and control the actions of another group by withholding funding, or putting stipulations on the use of funds. The power of the purse can be used positively or negatively. The power of the purse is most often utilized by forces within a government that do not have direct executive power, but have control over budgets and taxation.
Throughout the period before the American Civil War, petitions and memorials relating to the slavery question appeared in many records of the United States Congress. Between 1836 and 1844, the 21st rule of the U.S. House of Representatives provided that no petition relating to slavery would be entertained in any way; therefore, all such petitions and memorials received while this rule was in effect were tabled.
Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173 (1991), was a case in the United States Supreme Court that upheld Department of Health and Human Services regulations prohibiting employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion. This ruling was made after the Department issued a regulation in 1988 expanding its interpretation of the Title X provision that no family planning funds "shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning."
Joshua Reed Giddings was an American attorney, politician and a prominent opponent of slavery. He represented Northeast Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1838–59. He was at first a member of the Whig Party and was later a Republican, helping found the party.
Charles Gordon Atherton was an American politician and lawyer from New Hampshire. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives from 1837 to 1843. He was elected to the United States Senate from 1843 to 1849 and then again in 1853. He was a Democrat.
William Slade, Jr. was an American Whig and Anti-Masonic politician. He served as a U.S. Representative from Vermont from 1831 to 1843, where he was an outspoken opponent of slavery. He was the seventeenth Governor of Vermont.
In the United States the right to petition is enumerated in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which specifically prohibits Congress from abridging "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".
Timeline of women's legal rights represents formal changes and reforms regarding women's rights. The changes include actual law reforms as well as other formal changes, such as reforms through new interpretations of laws by precedents. For such things only in the United States, see Timeline of women's legal rights in the United States. The right to vote is exempted from the timeline: for that right, see Timeline of women's suffrage. The timeline excludes ideological changes and events within feminism and antifeminism: for that, see Timeline of feminism.
This is a timeline of reproductive rights legislation, a chronological list of laws and legal decisions affecting human reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are a sub-set of human rights pertaining to issues of reproduction and reproductive health. These rights may include some or all of the following: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to birth control, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence. Reproductive rights may also include the right to receive education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization, abortion, and contraception, and protection from gender-based practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) and male genital mutilation (MGM).
Smith v. Turner; Norris v. Boston, 48 U.S. 283 (1849), were two similar cases, argued together before the United States Supreme Court, which decided 5-4 that states do not have the right to impose a tax that is determined by the number of passengers of a designated category on board a ship and/or disembarking into the State. The cases are sometimes called the Passenger Case or Passenger Cases.
Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, 561 U.S. 661 (2010), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, the policy of the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, governing official recognition of student groups, which required the groups to accept all students regardless of their status or beliefs in order to obtain recognition.
Freedom suits were lawsuits in the Thirteen Colonies and the United States filed by enslaved people against slaveholders to assert claims to freedom, often based on descent from a free maternal ancestor, or time held as a resident in a free state or territory.
Like most contemporaries, John Quincy Adams' views on slavery evolved over time. Historian David F. Ericson asks why he never became an abolitionist. He never joined the movement called "abolitionist" by historians—the one led by William Lloyd Garrison—because it demanded the immediate abolition of slavery and insisted it was a sin to enslave people. Further, abolitionism meant disunion and Adams was a staunch champion of American nationalism and union.
While feminist movements became prevalent in Europe and North America in the 1960s and 1970s, the women of Latin America were gathering to oppose dictatorships and civil wars. As democracy began to spread across the region, feminist movements gradually began to push for more reproductive rights.
The slave trade in the District of Columbia was legal from its creation until 1850, when the trade in enslaved people in the District was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850. That restrictions on slavery in the District were probably coming was a major factor in the retrocession of the Virginia part of the District back to Virginia in 1847. Thus the large slave-trading businesses in Alexandria, such as Franklin & Armfield, could continue their operations in Virginia, where slavery was more secure.
