Life Matters

In this episode Brian outlines the direct legal and historical connection between the banning of slavery and the banning of abortion in the United States. It is critical to understand that it was the British who first ended slavery in the western European world. That happened in 1807 with the Slave Trade Act, and in 1833, ended throughout the Empire via  The Slavery Abolition Act, which ended slavery in all UK possessions as well as on the high seas.  A young Bostonian physician who had graduated from medical school and began practice in 1857 decided to specialize in childbirth.  He went to Edinburgh University, the finest medical school at that time. In 1857, even though the British had ended slavery 30 years earlier, the United States had cemented slavery through the terrible Dred Scott Decision of 1857, as well as attempting to expand slavery through the bloody Kansas-Nebraska Act.  Senator Douglas, the sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, said he was ‘personally opposed to slavery’ and he only wanted state