New bipartisan bill would let moms in Congress vote by proxy after giving birth
Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Sara Jacobs introduce legislation to allow new moms on Capitol Hill to vote by proxy.
WASHINGTON — Not long before she gave birth to her first child in August, first-term Rep. Anna Paulina Luna met with the House Republican leadership to ask how she should plan to cast votes on behalf of her constituents after her delivery.
“They told me that I couldn’t vote,” that House rules prohibited it, the Republican firebrand from Florida recalled in an interview with NBC News. Although she is the 12th woman to give birth while serving in Congress, the House has no guidance for members postpartum.
Matters only got worse after Luna developed high blood pressure right before giving birth, a potentially fatal condition known as pre-eclampsia that affects some pregnant women, and continued to struggle after her delivery. In her first weeks of motherhood, as her fellow lawmakers voted to avoid a government shutdown and to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Luna also developed mastitis, an infection common among women who are nursing, and her doctors advised her not to travel back to Washington.
Luna holding her son during votes for House speaker in October.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images fileDetermined to change the dynamic for women who come after her, Luna spent her doctor-mandated time at home reading the 1,500-page House Rules and Manual during breaks from caring for her baby boy, Henry. Now, she’s introducing a bipartisan bill that would allow women to vote by proxy — having a colleague cast a vote on their behalf — for the first six weeks after giving birth.
“I just wanted to make sure that this was one, put down on paper, so that there’s some guidance for other members that have kids after me,” she told NBC News in an interview. “Two, I just don’t think it’s fair to remove moms from the conversation. I can’t help having a baby. It’s a part of my life and so I shouldn’t be discriminated against because of it.”
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