Council of State deliberations continued over a proposal that would break the inherited rule that a child followed the enslaved status of the mother. That principle made enslaved women’s reproduction a basis of property claims. The debate’s legal vocabulary can obscure the people whose bodies and family ties were at stake.
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What rule did the free-birth proposal challenge?
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Explanation
The proposal challenged partus sequitur ventrem, the rule that a child followed the mother’s enslaved status.
The Free Womb proposal preserved the principle that a child always inherited the father’s enslaved status.
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Explanation
It challenged the rule that a child followed the enslaved status of the mother.