Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, a Democrat, just became the 13th voting member of Congress to give birth in office. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, a Republican, was the 12th when she welcomed her first child last year. And under current House rules, neither was able to vote while on leave, recovering from giving birth.

Now, they’re teaming up on a resolution to allow new parents to represent their constituents by designating another member to vote for them, commonly known as proxy voting, for 12 weeks after welcoming a child. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson did not include the measure in the rules package for the new Congress and later released a statement stating he believes proxy voting is unconstitutional. Both Pettersen and Luna believe they’ve been let down by House Republican leadership and are aiming to circumvent House leaders with a procedural maneuver known as a discharge petition to put to it a vote. 

“I’m grateful to have such broad support for this resolution, but it’s also been incredibly frustrating because it’s widely supported, we know we have the votes to pass it, but we have Republican leadership who’s unwilling to put it on the floor for a vote,” Pettersen said in an interview Friday, just days before she announced the birth of her second child, Samuel. 

“It’s how most people feel watching Congress — it doesn’t have to be this frustrating and difficult, and why can’t we do common sense things?” she said. 

Pettersen had to stop traveling to Washington in mid-January due to her pregnancy.

Luna in 2023 was advised by doctors not to travel while she was recovering from a difficult birth. Luna, in a video statement this month, called not being allowed to proxy vote while recovering a “slap in the face to every constituent” who elected her to Congress. 

“How is it not discriminatory to tell a duly elected member of Congress that she can’t vote because she gave birth to a child?” she said, adding: “New mothers in Congress should not be forced to choose their careers over children or choose children over careers.” 

Congress is older than the median American. The share of women serving in Congress was stagnant after the 2024 elections, and the fact that only a handful of members have given birth in office reflects how many women wait until after their children are grown to seek political office. Research has shown that increased availability of remote work helps keep women in the workforce — and Pettersen and Luna argue that changes like proxy voting for new parents would bring new, much-needed perspectives and life experiences to Congress. 

“When we modernize Congress, and we make it more accessible and address the barriers that younger people face, we get different policies, priorities and people who understand the current struggles that families are going through — not what it was like decades ago,” Pettersen said. 

Their effort, backed by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, has support from across the political spectrum in Congress. Pettersen is in the center-left New Democrat Coalition, while Luna is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives. Luna did not respond to an interview request. 

“We were able to come together on this specific issue,” Pettersen said of Luna. “I have really enjoyed our ability to keep each other informed, strategize on who we’re talking to on a path forward in just fighting together for something that we both care about even though we come from very different sides of our political spectrum.”

Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California, who has been open about her decision to freeze her eggs while in Congress, and Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, a swing district member who serves with Pettersen in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, are co-leading the resolution. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, House members could designate another member to vote on their behalf. Members of both parties made regular use of proxy voting, but some Republicans, led by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, sued to end its use. Federal courts rejected those arguments, but McCarthy formally ended the practice when Republicans won back control of the House in 2022.  

“I have great sympathy, empathy for all of our young women legislators who are of birthing age. It’s a real quandary,” Johnson said in his statement. “But I’m afraid it doesn’t fit with the language of the Constitution, and that’s the inescapable truth that we have.” 

Jeannette Rankin became the first woman to serve in Congress in 1916, nearly 130 years after the drafting of the Constitution and three years before the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote, a right that was still restricted for many women of color. In 1973, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke became the first member of Congress to give birth in office.

Pettersen called the constitutional concerns “a non-issue,” noting that the language of the resolution accounts for the quorum concerns Johnson raised in his statement. 

“I agree with Mike Johnson that us being together in person is very important and that it’s critical to our ability to build these bridges, to build relationships, but in narrow circumstances and with the right guardrails, proxy voting can work,” she argued. 

Pettersen said the lack of accommodations for new parents reflects a lack of willingness on the part of institutions to evolve with the times. Pettersen gave birth to her first child while she was serving in the Colorado legislature and needed to get permission from leadership to go on leave and classify her leave as being for a “chronic illness” in order to get paid. She introduced legislation granting Colorado lawmakers 12 weeks of paid parental leave that passed in 2022. 

“This is not some vacation. This is the time where your kid needs you the most, it’s when they’re the most vulnerable in their life and it is the beginning of their life where you need to be there,” she said. “We need to modernize Congress to accommodate for parents, for young families, and our country will be better off because of that.” 

Pettersen and Luna are marshaling support for a discharge petition to circumvent Johnson and put the measure to the floor for a vote. They can bring a discharge petition 30 legislative days after first introducing their measure, which falls in late March. Historically, discharge petitions have rarely been successful in part because they require a majority of House members to sign on — but Luna and Pettersen are determined. They expect widespread support from Democrats for the measure, meaning that in the narrowly divided House, they need just a handful of Republicans to sign on. 

“As a Republican male member said, it’s very hard to say no to a pregnant lady asking for their vote, so I think that I am losing some of my leverage here,” Pettersen said. “But if I need to show up with my newborn, nursing, to sign the discharge petition and to talk to members, I will do that.”