When Did the Senate Create the Rule Not Allowing Babies
Sen. Tammy Duckworth walks beyond stage at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. She is the first senator to give nascence while serving in office. Alex Wong/Getty Images hibernate caption
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Alex Wong/Getty Images
Sen. Tammy Duckworth walks beyond phase at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. She is the kickoff senator to give nascence while serving in office.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
It is so common that it likely volition take happened at least once somewhere in the United States by the fourth dimension y'all finish reading this sentence. But it took more than 230 years for it to happen to a senator in office.
On Mon, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., became the commencement sitting senator to requite nascence, challenging Senate leaders to face just how sick prepared they may be to adapt the needs of a new mother.
Duckworth, fifty, and her hubby, Bryan Bowlsbey, appear she had given birth to a daughter, Maile (MY-lee) Pearl this week. Their first kid, Abigail, was born in 2014, while Duckworth served in the Business firm of Representatives.
"As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a Senator can be, I'm inappreciably alone or unique as a working parent," Duckworth said in a statement, "and my children only brand me more committed to doing my chore and standing up for hardworking families everywhere."
Kickoff, Duckworth is seizing the opportunity to call for adjusting Senate rules to accommodate new parents.
There are changes that could assist make a meaning senator less remarkable in the futurity, especially every bit record numbers of women fix out to run for function. A recent Associated Press survey found that 309 Autonomous and Republican women so far had filed paperwork to run for the House — a new high.
Duckworth says the most problematic Senate rules generally forbid anyone who isn't a senator, a designated aide, or other official from being on the Senate flooring. Because a senator must be on the flooring in gild to vote, she argues that she should exist immune to bring her young child with her.
"For me to find out that there are issues with the United states of america Senate'southward rules where I may non be able to vote or bring my child onto the flooring of the Senate when I need to vote because nosotros ban children from the floor, I idea, 'Wow, I feel like I'thousand living in the 19th century instead of the 21st,' " she told CNN last month.
A spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to comment on Duckworth'southward proposal.
The Senate has bent its rules to make accommodations for senators before. Those examples tend to favor legislators battling serious illnesses, a fact that is not surprising, given that the average senator in January 2017 was virtually 62 years erstwhile. Exceptions take too been fabricated for members with limited mobility. In 1997, for instance, some steps on the Senate floor were replaced with a ramp to assist Sen. Max Cleland D-Ga., a disabled veteran who used a wheelchair.
Beak Dauster, who brash Democrats on Senate process for decades before retiring last year, says senators sometimes ask their colleagues for permission, with unanimous approving, to bring aides onto the floor. Duckworth may be able to follow that example with her newborn, he says.
"I think it would be wonderful theater if she went to the flooring, asked consent that I exist allowed to bring my infant child to the floor for brief periods of fourth dimension for the rest of the session of Congress," Dauster says, "and run into who objects."
Some people worry there is a lingering stigma among voters against female lawmakers with young children who need to have exit. Many women take postponed or ruled out a career in politics considering of it. "We're asking women, in some senses, to take on a third part-fourth dimension job," says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
At least two women running for office this year are tackling the stigma head on. They accept footage of themselves breastfeeding in their campaign ads.
When mothers do run, they may offer a unique perspective. After having her starting time girl, Duckworth introduced legislation that would ensure safe, make clean and convenient lactation rooms in large- and medium-sized airports. Former Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), the mother of twins who at 38 became the youngest adult female elected to the Senate and subsequently the first woman to chair the Senate agriculture committee, championed more than nutritious schoolhouse lunches in the late 1990s.
While she is the commencement in the Senate, Duckworth is among 10 women who have given birth while serving in Congress, five of whom are currently in role. And at least two former senators adopted children while in role: Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Kay Bailey Hutchison R-Texas.
Progress toward family unit-friendly policies has been tedious on Capitol Loma — and primarily female-driven. The Part of the Attending Physician opened Congress' first designated lactation room in 2006. After California Democrat Nancy Pelosi became the start female Speaker of the House in 2007, she opened more lactation rooms — enabling staffers and members to improve adhere to the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation that children exist breastfed for at least the first year of life.
Duckworth has faced many challenges in her life, including being ane of the first women to fly in Army combat missions in Performance Iraqi Freedom, and she lost her legs during ane mission there. She is besides no stranger to the challenges facing a new mother in Congress. In 2014, pregnant with her showtime child and nether a doc's orders not to travel, Duckworth petitioned House Democratic leaders to allow her to vote by proxy in a round of internal political party elections. They refused, citing the bug it could cause when members request absences for other reasons.
Unlike the Senate, though, the House allows children on the floor. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., brought forth her then-7-year-onetime son, who has Down syndrome, as the Firm passed legislation in 2014 to aid those with disabilities and their families save money for their care.
But Congress does not accept a coating parental exit policy. McMorris Rodgers, who is the only member of Congress in history to have given birth 3 times while in part, missed 3 weeks of votes while her son, born prematurely, was in intensive intendance.
"We need more women and moms in Congress — both in the House and in the Senate," McMorris Rodgers said in a argument to Kaiser Health News. "And so we should make sure that the congressional workplace reflects the needs of working moms."
"My kids, and having all 3 of them while serving in the House, have made me a meliorate legislator," she adds. "Beingness a mom makes politics real."
Kaiser Wellness News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially contained program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/04/11/601358760/make-room-for-baby-after-giving-birth-duckworth-presses-senate-to-bend-rules
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