Part of a series on
Slavery
Contemporary Child labour Child soldiers Conscription Debt Forced marriage Bride buying Child marriage Wife selling Forced prostitution Human trafficking Peonage Penal labour Contemporary Africa 21st-century jihadism Sexual slavery Wage slavery
Historical Antiquity Egypt Babylonia Greece Rome Medieval Europe Ancillae Balkan slave trade Byzantine Empire Kholop Serfs History In Russia Emancipation Thrall Muslim world Contract of manumission Crimean slave trade Ottoman Empire Avret Esir Pazarları Barbary Coast slave trade pirates Sack of Baltimore Slave raid of Suðuroy Turkish Abductions Concubinage history Ma malakat aymanukum Avret Esir Pazarları Harem Abbasid harem Ottoman Imperial Harem Jarya/Cariye Odalisque Qiyan Umm walad Circassian slave trade 21st century Atlantic slave trade Bristol Brazil Database Dutch Middle Passage Nantes New France Panyarring Spanish Empire Slave Coast Thirteen colonies Topics and practice Conscription Ghilman Mamluk Devshirme Blackbirding Coolie Corvée labor Field slaves in the United States Treatment House slaves Saqaliba Slave market Slave raiding Child soldiers White slavery Naval Galley slave Impressment Pirates Shanghaiing Slave ship
By country or region Sub-Saharan Africa Contemporary Africa Trans-Saharan slave trade Red Sea slave trade Indian Ocean slave trade Angola Chad Ethiopia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Seychelles Somalia South Africa Sudan North and South America Americas indigenous U.S. Natives Aztec United States Field slaves female Contemporary maps partus prison labor Slave codes Treatment interregional Human trafficking The Bahamas Canada Caribbean Barbados British Virgin Islands Trinidad Code Noir Latin America Brazil Lei Áurea Colombia Cuba Haiti revolt Restavek (Encomienda) Puerto Rico East, Southeast, and South Asia Human trafficking in Southeast Asia Bhutan China Booi Aha Laogai penal system India Debt bondage Chukri System Japan comfort women Korea Kwalliso Thailand Yankee princess Vietnam Australia and Oceania Australia Human trafficking Blackbirding Slave raiding in Easter Island Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea Blackbirding in Polynesia Europe and North Asia Sex trafficking in Europe Britain Denmark Dutch Republic Germany in World War II Malta Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russia Spain Sweden North Africa and West Asia Afghanistan Algeria Bahrain Egypt Human trafficking in the Middle East Iran Iraq Jordan Kuwait Lebanon Libya Morocco Oman Palestine Saudi Arabia Syria Tunisia Qatar Yemen United Arab Emirates
Religion Bible Christianity Catholicism Mormonism Islam Judaism Baháʼí Faith
Opposition and resistance 1926 Slavery Convention Abolitionism U.K. U.S. Abolitionists Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention Anti-Slavery International Blockade of Africa U.K. U.S. Colonization Liberia Sierra Leone Compensated emancipation Freedman manumission Freedom suit Slave Power Underground Railroad songs Slave rebellion Slave Trade Acts International law Third Servile War 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]
Related Common law Indentured servitude Unfree labour Fugitive slaves laws Great Dismal Swamp maroons List of slaves owners last survivors of American slavery Marriage of enslaved people (United States) Slave narrative films songs Slave name Slave catcher Slave patrol Slave Route Project breeding court cases Washington Jefferson J.Q. Adams Lincoln Emancipation Proclamation 40 acres Freedmen's Bureau Iron bit Emancipation Day
v t e

Freedom of wombs (Spanish: Libertad de vientres, Portuguese: Lei do Ventre Livre), also referred to as free birth or the law of wombs, was a 19th century judicial concept in several Latin American countries, that declared that all wombs bore free children. All children are born free, even if the mother is enslaved. This principle did not go into effect unless a country adopted it and included it in its constitution or other legislation. It overturned a tradition, under which babies born to enslaved women became the property of the women's owners. Intended as a step towards ending slavery, it was unevenly adopted.

By country

A movement for abolition grew in the American colonies in the 19th century, influenced by the liberal ideals spread by these countries' independence movements. One of the first steps toward abolition was the Ley de Libertad de Vientres, an 1811 law written by Manuel de Salas of Chile.^[1]

In Argentina, the Law of Wombs was passed on February 2, 1813 by the Assembly of Year XIII. The law stated that those born to slave mothers after January 31, 1813 would be granted freedom when contracting matrimony, or on their 16th birthday for women and 20th for men. Upon manumission, they were to be given land and tools to work it.^[2] In 1853, Argentina fully abolished slavery with the Constitution of 1853.

In Colombia, the Law of Wombs was first passed by the government of Antioquia in 1814, but it was not until 1824 that the country accepted it.^[3] After years of laws that only purported a partial advancement towards abolition, President José Hilario López, because of the growing popular unrest, pushed Congress to pass total abolition on May 21, 1851. Former owners were compensated by the government.^[4]

In Peru, the president José de San Martín established "the freedom of wombs" for those born after the declaration of independence in 1821.^[5]

Venezuela endorsed a similar law in 1821,^[6] as well as Ecuador,^[7] Uruguay in 1825,^[8] Paraguay in 1842,^[9] and Brazil in 1871.^[10]

In Brazil, the Rio Branco Law, also referred to as "Law of Free Birth", was passed by the Brazilian Parliament on 1871. By the 1870s social tensions were rising due to slavery. As a compromise, Parliament enacted a law freeing children born to enslaved women. The "Law of Free Birth" meant that no children were born enslaved. Slaves eventually were then granted freedom through manumission and later on, emancipation laws that targeted older slaves.^[11]

Spain passed a similar law in 1869 to apply to its plantation colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico, and passed it^{[clarification needed]} in 1870, to take effect in 1872. On the Iberian mainland, Spain had abolished slavery in 1837. It is also known as Ley Moret (Moret Law).^[12]

The countries that first denied the enslavement of babies born to enslaved mothers proceeded to abolish slavery in total later. Similar gradual abolition laws had been passed in some of the northern United States after the American Revolutionary War, namely, New York in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804. All the slaves were freed in both states before the American Civil War.