There is only one conclusion to draw from the debacle over allowing members of Congress who are also new parents to vote by proxy: Republicans don’t think women should be able to vote (in the House, at least).
This week, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a religious and vehemently “pro-life” congressman, used all his power and influence to try to kill a vote on proxy voting in the House for new parents pushed by Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and Colorado Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen, both new mothers.
The bill is simple: It would let members of Congress who are new moms and dads cast their votes from home until their children are three months old instead of being forced to drag themselves to Capitol Hill.
It’s hard to think of a more obvious and much-needed change to the House’s rules, and it’s hard to think of a bill that should have been more obviously bipartisan.
Americans elect members of Congress to represent their interests, and they deserve to have those members cast ballots. Members of Congress are also human beings, and sometimes they have newborns at home who need their care. (More pointedly, Congress is increasingly female, and more of its members are having babies.)
Without proxy voting, a congresswoman who has a C-section either needs to fail to do her job or get on an airplane, fly to Washington, D.C., and hobble her way into Congress. A congresswoman who is breastfeeding needs to bring that newborn, without a developed immune system, with her on what might be a cross-country flight.
New fathers don’t have the same physical limitations, but they’re also being asked to abandon their newborns and partners, leaving their partners—usually women—to do all of the work of caring for an infant.
It’s impossible to know Johnson’s motives or those of the 96 percent of Republicans who did not support proxy voting. (Just eight Republicans—all men—joined Luna and the Democratic caucus in voting for its passage.)
But given their collective records—and their statements—it’s not hard to draw some conclusions. Among them, these supposedly “pro-family, pro-life” conservatives think that the only acceptable form of family is one in which mothers are at home with their children.
“Being in Congress is a privilege,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said, telling Luna, “You don’t have to be here, and there are plenty of people in her district that could serve in Congress if she chose time to be home and be a mother.”
Greene has three children, making it especially odd for her to suggest that women cannot both take time with their families and serve in Congress.
Johnson himself has claimed that allowing proxy voting for women recovering from childbirth “would do great violence” to Congress.
“If you allow it for some situations, you’re ultimately going to have to allow it for all,” he said. “And I think that destroys the deliberative nature of the body.”
Yes, it is important to have members of Congress appear in person. It’s also important for members of Congress to appear at town halls and be accountable to their constituents—something Republican members are currently refusing to do and that Johnson has urged them not to. It is worth noting that the president spends remarkably little time in Washington, often signing executive orders from Mar-a-Lago and working remotely so he can go to his golf games.
But it’s also important to consider the point of Congress, which is fundamentally a representative institution. Making it impossible for new parents to partake in government as they were elected to do does a huge disservice to the institution—and to the public more broadly. Americans deserve to have their representatives actually represent them; they deserve representatives who understand their lives. To push new parents out of Congress makes Congress a less representative and less effective institution.
Allowing proxy voting for new parents does not mean that Congress will go fully remote. Workplaces across the country provide parental leave, and new parents routinely join meetings, respond to emails, and do many other aspects of their jobs from home when they have new babies to care for. And then they return to their offices!
I suspect if you asked Americans whether they would prefer their member of Congress (a) vote by proxy while home with an infant or (b) not vote at all, they’d overwhelmingly choose the proxy vote. (I also suspect that most Americans would want to extend work-from-home privileges to anyone who just had a baby and whose job could be done remotely.)
But clearly, for most Republicans, allowing new mothers to work undermines their broader ideology, which is a return to traditional patriarchal gender roles. We see this across the Trump-controlled federal government and in Republican-run states. Not a single Republican state has mandatory paid family leave; 13 Democratic ones, plus the very blue District of Columbia, do.
The worst states to live in as a woman—the states with the highest poverty levels, worst healthcare, lowest life expectancy for women, highest domestic violence rates, highest homicide rates against women, and highest levels of maternal and infant mortality—are overwhelmingly conservative and Republican-led. Trump’s HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has gutted funding for maternal mortality tracking, domestic violence prevention, and fertility research.
In a new wrinkle, President Trump has come out in favor of the proxy voting bill.
“You’re having a baby, you should be able to call in and vote,” Trump told reporters as he flew to Florida for a weekend of golf. “I’m in favor of that.”
Now that the GOP Big Daddy has spoken, Johnson might get on board, which would itself be telling: It’s not enough for women to say they need an accommodation, but if Trump gives his blessing, then the ladies can have their proxy votes.
Rep. Brittany Pettersen brought her young baby, Sam, to the House floor to speak in favor of the bill, demonstrating the exact kind of dedication and fortitude that makes her a great representative.
But a nine-week-old shouldn’t have to be dragged from Colorado to D.C. and then carried into Congress just so his mom can do the job for which she was duly elected.
Pettersen has behaved nothing short of heroically. But women shouldn’t have to be heroes; we should just be able to work and have babies—even if (especially if) we are in elected office.
