Sen. Duckworth's pregnancy challenges the U.S. Senate

Sen. Tammy Duckworth often takes her daughter through the halls of Congress.

IT'S APPROPRIATE that Sen. Tammy Duckworth is championing the issue of paid family leave.

“Across our nation, working parents face barriers to staying in the workforce," she wrote in a CNN commentary. "Lack of access to affordable child care and to paid family, medical and parental leave forces people to choose between taking care of their children or a sick family member and losing their job and their health insurance.”

Duckworth, who announced her pregnancy last month, will soon become the first senator to give birth while in office. While she plans to take 12 weeks of paid leave, according to her interview on the latest episode of Politico’s Women Rule podcast, she doesn’t think she can “technically take maternity leave.”

A pregnant senator presents new questions and potential conflicts that the Senate has never before considered. For example, Duckworth says that if she takes maternity leave, she “won’t be allowed to sponsor legislation or vote during that time period.”

There’s also a rule against bringing children onto the Senate floor, which could potentially cause problems for Duckworth.

“You are not allowed to bring children onto the floor of the Senate at all,” says the Thai/American who gave birth to her first daughter when she was serving in the House of Representatives. “If I have to vote, and I’m breastfeeding my child, especially during my maternity leave period, what do I do? Leave her sitting outside?”

Rights for the working woman seem to have stalled over the past generation. Since the passage of the Family Medical Leave Act in 1993, only those who work for government or large companies could have enjoyed the protection.

“At the time," says Duckworth, "it was an important step forward for our country, but it is nowhere near enough. For instance, the law is not comprehensive; many workers across the country are ineligible under the law and don’t qualify to receive unpaid time off, and the FMLA does little to help Americans who cannot afford to take unpaid time off.”

The United States remains the only industrialized nation without paid family leave.

“Paid family leave is an elite benefit in the U.S.," according to a report from PL+US,  "94% of low-income working people have no access to paid family leave. Unequal paid family leave policies at the nation’s largest retail employers hits low-income and households of color the hardest.”

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