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Although during the 1840s James Polk cultivated the image of a Southern moderate on the slavery question, his early career contradicted this impression. In 1832 he had provoked a furious debate in the U.S. House of Representatives, aimed at discouraging any criticism there of slavery, which foreshadowed later debates over the “gag rule.” In October 1839, as governor of Tennessee, he publicly adopted the Calhounite view that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to take any antislavery action, even in the District of Columbia or in the federal territories. Both publicly and behind the scenes, Polk promoted the view that disunionism would be an inevitable consequence of the enactment of the (allegedly) abolitionist-tainted slavery policies of the Whig Party. Polk acted from political conviction, but also in accordance with his own economic interest, as he doubled his Mississippi plantation investment during the twelve months before October 1839.

This chapter discusses the evolution of the global gag rule and the existing evidence on its effects. When it was announced in Mexico City, the policy created global uproar with its abrupt change in position on population control and abortion. Pressure from domestic antiabortion groups weighed heavily in the administration’s new policy stance on family-planning assistance. Subsequent rescissions and reinstatements of the global gag rule have caused large fluctuations in US funding for family planning, as demonstrated in the chapter’s analysis of aggregate data. Evidence from qualitative studies indicates that the restrictions on US family-planning assistance under George Bush beginning in 2001 caused major disruptions in service delivery, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. This evidence is crucial for understanding the channels through which women’s reproductive health outcomes are related to restrictions on US foreign aid.

This chapter highlights political abolitionists’ strategies for building collaborative relationships with prominent antislavery politicians, especially a handful of potential Whig allies in the U.S. House of Representatives. Political abolitionists recognized that antislavery representatives like ex-President John Quincy Adams, Seth Gates, Joshua Giddings, and William Slade, could broadcast antislavery arguments to a national audience. Working together to produce floor controversies, especially over the gag rule, that could dramatize the problem of slaveholders’ political power, abolitionist lobbyists found antislavery Whigs could be powerful partners. For political abolitionists, though, navigating relationships with Whig politicians who were constantly juggling ideological conviction and partisan obligations became even more challenging after the founding of the Liberty Party. These tensions appear most pronouncedly in the lobbying work of abolitionist newspaperman Joshua Leavitt, who moved into a congressional boarding house that came to be known as “Abolition House” to facilitate political abolitionist efforts to lobby and cooperate with antislavery congressmen to further diffuse an anti-Slave Power message.

Chapter 7 concludes by highlighting the three biggest messages from the analysis presented in this book: (1) the global gag rule has failed to achieve its goal of reducing abortions; (2) restrictive legislation is associated with more unsafe abortions; and (3) the expanded global gag rule is likely to have negative repercussions across a range of health outcomes for women, children, and men. They are simple but powerful messages that should be heard by policymakers over the voices calling for an ideologically based policy that fails to achieve its desired outcome. The chapter closes with a more constructive and cost-effective approach for US family-planning assistance that targets integrated reproductive health services.

This chapter demonstrates how abolitionist arguments about Southerners’ disproportionate political power developed into a sophisticated analyses condemning the Whig and Democratic Parties as the Slave Power’s key auxiliaries. Abolitionists developed and increasingly emphasized these arguments especially in response to proslavery infringements on civil liberties, like the House gag rule on antislavery petitions and southern postal censorship. The chapter then shows how the Slave Power argument helped impel political abolitionists to organized political action, from the petition controversy to candidate interrogation and ultimately toward third-party politics. The election of 1840 particularly sharpened the abolitionist critique of the Second Party System and inspired the founding of the abolitionist Liberty Party.

This chapter argues that the book fills a knowledge gap by conducting a systematic analysis of how the global gag rule affects women’s reproductive health across developing regions. The book extends the focus of the two previous econometric studies of the global gag rule’s impact in sub-Saharan Africa to include three additional developing regions: Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and South and Southeast Asia. This statistical analysis is grounded in a conceptual framework that models the complex factors that influence women’s decision-making about fertility. The chapter also describes the book’s multimethod approach to examining restrictions on women’s reproductive health through historical analysis, case studies, and analysis of aggregate data. The evolution of family-planning programs, the links between contraceptive access and fertility rates, the relationship between restrictive abortion laws and abortion rates, and the likelihood of other adverse effects are also introduced.

One common objection to the colonization movement was that it distracted from the fight for the abolition of slavery. Chapter 7 argues that the rift over slavery in America was deepening; antislavery and proslavery movements were moving toward extremes rather than reaching compromise or consensus. The chapter opens with the brutal murder of abolitionist newspaperman Elijah Lovejoy and discusses the gag rule passed in the US House of Representatives, which automatically tables any proposed legislation for the abolition of slavery. For enslaved and free black people in the United States, things are getting worse.

International organisations play a role in challenging restricted access to abortion in national contexts. This chapter considers the use of human rights treaties and an analysis of how access to reproductive health is impacted in situations of conflict and humanitarian crisis. The role of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), is considered with reference to the case study of the Philippines. This case study illustrates how access to contraception provided a driver for legal action in a setting where access to abortion was severely restricted and how a post abortion care policy has provided an alternative way to deal with unsafe abortion. The impact of the Global Gag rule, which has restricted funding from the US to those working on reproductive health around the world, is explored. The case study of the IPPF organisation and its work on humanitarian issues provides insight into the challenges faced in providing reproductive health services in settings where resources are extremely limited.

Chapter 3 places the global gag rule into a broader context by examining the longer-term history of US family-planning assistance within a framework of global reproductive governance characterized by three paradigms: population control, safe motherhood, and women’s reproductive health. Early proponents of family-planning assistance were motivated primarily by fears of explosive population growth in developing countries. Their answer was to disseminate modern contraceptives across large populations to reduce fertility rates and control population growth. As the predictions of Malthusian-type disaster failed to materialize, the paradigm surrounding population assistance shifted to safe motherhood. Growing pressure from feminists and women’s groups to focus on the rights of all women, not just mothers, contributed to the third paradigm shift toward women’s reproductive health. Each time the United States has imposed the global gag rule it has antagonized donors, agencies, and governments who have set the priorities of these paradigms in reproductive governance.

This chapter uses analysis of aggregate data, a theoretical model, and a review of the empirical literature to examine the relationship between contraceptive availability and fertility. A correlation analysis shows that as contraceptive use rises, fertility rates fall, thus supporting the main rationale for investments in family-planning programs. These aggregate data on contraception and fertility are consistent with a theoretical model of women’s reproductive health decisions. The model can be used to predict the effects of an increase in the cost of contraceptives as might occur under the global gag rule. Higher prices and decreased availability of contraceptives are predicted to lower the intensity with which women use contraception, which results in a higher risk of unintended pregnancies. Depending on the relative costs of having an abortion and giving birth, more unintended pregnancies will lead to higher abortion rates or birth rates or both.

Chapter 5 provides a detailed examination of global abortion laws and rates. Policies and practices around abortion have evolved since ancient times in ways that vary across regions according to deeply entrenched religious views, political ideologies, patriarchal structures, and strong stigmas. A critical conclusion is that instead of reducing abortion rates, restrictive laws change the conditions under which women obtain abortions in ways that endanger their health. Unsafe abortion is one of the leading causes of maternal mortality, and some governments have started to liberalize their laws. However, implementation is often slow due to weak health infrastructure. Offsetting these challenges are innovations in reproductive health technologies that have enabled women in some countries to have a “medical abortion” using pharmaceuticals made available through the internet, pharmacies, and black market. Some obstacles remain that prevent this option, including affordability, import restrictions, lack of information about proper usage, and slow-to-change stigmas.

The epilogue briefly traces the history of population thought and policy from the 1974 UN World Population Conference to the present. It contends that the real problem with population is that it remains a prominent scapegoat for nearly all of the world’s ills and demonstrates that debates about how to control the growth of the world’s population have largely silenced and co-opted voices that refuse to attribute such pressing problems as poverty and climate change to expanding human numbers. The framing of the world’s complex issues as “the population problem” diverts resources from just and equitable solutions at the expense of the world’s most vulnerable people and of the planet itself.