American National Government - POSC 111 Resource Guide

Expulsion of the products of conception before the embryo or fetus is viable. Any interruption of human pregnancy prior to the 28th week is known as abortion.

Abortion refers to the purposeful termination of a pregnancy. Millions of girls and women have sought and received abortions during the two eras when the procedure was legal (eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century, and 1973 to the present), and during the criminal era (mid-nineteenth century to 1973).

The death penalty has become one of the most controversial issues worldwide in the area of criminal justice. More than half the world’s nations have banned the use of the death penalty or no longer apply it, even through the death penalty may remain legal.

The Death Penalty Information Center is a national non-profit organization serving the media and the public with analysis and information on issues concerning capital punishment.

The first nation-wide shot in the “war on drugs” in the United States was the 1914 Harrison Narcotics Act. This war was escalated by the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which effectively outlawed cannabis and hashish. Since then, this war has waxed and waned repeatedly, although for the past thirty years it has largely accelerated.

In 1990, when the Gallup Organization asked Americans “Do you consider yourself to be an environmentalist or not?” a remarkable seventy-three percent claimed to be environmentalists. That same year, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that fifty-six percent of Americans agreed with the statement “We must protect the environment, even if it means jobs in the local community are lost.” What does it mean that a majority of Americans describe themselves as “environmentalists,” and what exactly is “the environment” they seem so willing to protect?

Agency established to safeguard the environment.
Congress officially brought the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) into existence in 1970, but its roots go back as far as 1962. The impetus for the USEPA was a best-selling book by Rachel Carson, a bird watcher, titled Silent Spring. The carefully researched and wonderfully written work focused on the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Her book was to the environmental movement what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to the abolitionist movement and brought together more than 14,000 people who formed a grassroots effort to protect the environment.

Affirmed rulings of the district court and court of appeals, which held that, regardless of their content, the offering of prayers at public school graduation ceremonies constituted a violation of the Establishment Clause.

In American religious and legal history, the terms church and state refer to the religious communities in their relation to the civil order.

Liberty to speak and otherwise express oneself and one's opinions. Like freedom of the press (see press, freedom of the), which pertains to the publication of speech, freedom of speech itself has been absolute in no time or place.

Freedom of speech is one of several rights guaranteed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is considered to be one of the foundations of a democratic society, since the expression of varying viewpoints is fundamental to the notion of a government freely chosen by its citizens.