This chapter focus on the institutional debates around a free-womb law project. The Conservative Party´s modernizing faction, led by Prime Minister, the Viscount of Rio Branco, proposed a free-womb law bill - inspired by Spanish legislation – on the House floor, in 1871. This action provoked a pro-slavery backlash. From the diffuse proslavery social groups (entire social strata had economic activities and a way of life-based on slave labor) emerged a politically organized pro-slavery reaction. This countermovement diffused proslavery rhetoric (a "circumstantial" defense of slavery), organized civil associations (Plantation Clubs), and formed a parliamentary bloc (the “hardliners”). On the other side, the first cycle of antislavery mobilization in the public space appeared, with public conferences, pamphlets, and the foundation of civil associations between 1868 and 1871. Resistance did not prevent the free-womb Law from being approved in 1871, liberating children born to slave mothers. It mitigated, however, the government’s original bill and postponed its full enforcement until the newborns had reached the age of eight, in 1879.

There had always been antislavery statements in Brazil, but a social movement for abolition arose in the mid-1860s, thanks to changes in the international scene – the abolition of slavery in the United States and its acceleration in the Spanish colonies – that caused a split in imperial political parties over whether to propose a free-womb law. This context triggered the onset of anti-slavery mobilization in Brazil, as an elite based abolitionism, led by dissident members of the imperial elite. Two of them created styles of activism which were used throughout the campaign. The black entrepreneur André Rebouças started lobbying for abolition, working as a bridge between the social elite, court society, and the political system, while the educator Abílio Cesar Borges created abolitionist “civic ceremonies”, with poetic declamations, and encouraged his international abolitionist contacts to pressurize the Brazilian Emperor to be in favor of abolition.