Pregnant in Power: U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen Confronts a System Built for Men

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Pregnant in Power: U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen Confronts a System Built for Men
PUBLISHED 6/10/2025 by Bonnie Stabile | UPDATED 6/13/2025 at 8:15 A.M. PT
In Congress’ 236-year history, only 13 voting members have given birth while in office.



U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) holds her one-month old baby Sam as she departs during a series of votes at the Capitol on March 11, 2025, in Washington. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

In the fight for better policies for mothers and families, Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) has also had to fight to have her own voice heard on Capitol Hill. Last October, five months pregnant with her second child, Pettersen proposed a change to the House Rules Committee for “a narrow exception to the prohibition on proxy voting” that would allow members of Congress to vote by proxy while on parental leave, a push begun by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) after giving birth to her first child in 2023. This would have ensured, Petterson said in a recent interview with Ms., that as a member of Congress “you’re able to have your voice, your constituents’ voices represented” during a critical time for your family and health.

Despite Republicans’ stated opposition to proxy voting, Pettersen and Luna scored a rare bipartisan win to move forward with the measure on April 1, representing an embarrassing defeat for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). In response, Johnson “adjourned the entire House for the rest of the week,” buying himself time to broker a deal to kill the effort that would have enabled remote voting for new moms in Congress.
Johnson leaned in to the Republican claim that proxy voting was unconstitutional, and elaborated that it would “reopen Pandora’s box,” doing “great violence to the institution.” When in effect during the pandemic, though, 80 percent of all House members voted by proxy, including, ironically, roughly 70 percent of the Republican plaintiffs in the McCarthy, et al. V. Pelosi et al. (2020) case, which argued that those very votes should be invalid.

Deploying further metaphor, Johnson called proxy voting for new parents a slippery slope, saying, “If you allow it for some situations, you’re ultimately going to have to allow it for all.” Calling himself “pro-family,” the speaker nonetheless demurred that the practice violated “more than two centuries of tradition and institution.” In that tradition, the U.S. Congress as an institution excluded women from its ranks for well over a century and has been slow to make accommodations to be more inclusive once they arrived. It wasn’t until 1916 that the first woman was elected to Congress (Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont.). Since 1789, only 3 percent of total House members have been women; and in 2025 28.7 percent of House members are women. In its 236 year history, only 13 voting members have given birth while in office—Reps. Pettersen and Luna most recently. It even “famously took until 2011 for female lawmakers”—there were 76 of them at the time—just “to get their own bathroom off the House floor.” And the quest for proxy voting for mothers like herself, Pettersen concedes, may have to wait until Democrats are in the majority again, though she is guardedly hopeful to be able to “come together on a solution before that.”

“It’s mind blowing just how hard it is to make very small changes in Congress, and the amount (sic) of people who fight for the status quo,” Pettersen observed.

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Pettersen is currently working to pass legislation to allow proxy voting for up to 12 weeks for members who have recently given birth or whose spouse has. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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But so does the Republican majority in the House, which supports Trump administration policies that go further than merely maintaining the status quo and seek to turn back the clock on inclusion, representation and reproductive rights. Their vision of what “make America great again represents,” said Pettersen, “is going back to the 1950s.” Trump’s Mothers’ Day Proclamation shows their hand. It celebrates the “selfless service of every mother in America” and expresses the desire for “families across America to grow” and “enjoy the highest standard of living on Earth on a single income” (emphasis added). Promoting measures that support women’s full inclusion in the workplace and public life is not part of their playbook.

https://msmagazine.com/2025/06/10/rep-brittany-pettersen-mothers-proxy-voting/