On Tuesday, Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat of Illinois, announced her upcoming pregnancy to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Wanted to share some exciting personal news… pic.twitter.com/ZZyu9pG2nq
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) January 23, 2018
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Duckworth, 49, is expecting her second child this spring, shortly after her 50th birthday. She gave birth to daughter Abigail on November 18, 2014, during her tenure as United States Representative for Illinois. Duckworth and her husband, Bryan Bowlsbey, conceived both of their children through the process of in vitro fertilization, known as IVF.
Born in Bangkok, Thailand, to an American father and a Chinese mother, Duckworth attended the University of Hawaii before pursuing a Master’s degree in international affairs from the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After completing her master’s degree, Duckworth moved to Illinois where she attended Northwestern Illinois University as a doctoral student in political science, joining the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps and serving for 23 years as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard. When her unit was called to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom (or the Iraq war), Duckworth flew Blackhawk helicopters before losing both of her legs and nearly her right arm after a rocket-propelled grenade struck a helicopter that she was piloting. She received the Purple Heart, a military award for those wounded in combat and was promoted to major in 2004, shortly after losing her legs. After serving as Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs and under President Barack Obama in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, Duckworth successfully won a seat as U.S. Representative for Illinois in November 2012.
Courtesy: Newsweek​
Duckworth decided to run for the Senate after her first daughter was born in 2014. Now, she works to introduce and sponsor legislation that helps women and mothers, including the Domestic Violence Gun Homicide Prevention Act of 2017, Protect Access to Birth Control Act and the Child Care for Working Families Act. Additionally, Duckworth has worked to introduce the Friendly Airports for Mothers Act of 2017, which would provide clean lactation rooms for nursing mothers in medium and large sized airports across the country at no additional cost to taxpayers. In an article published in Cosmopolitan last year, Duckworth cited her own experiences as a travelling mother, disclosing her own “stressful and inordinately difficult” experiences in finding a place to comfortably and safely express breast milk.
In United States history, ten Congresswomen have given birth before taking office. Of those ten, Duckworth will distinguish herself as the first senator to deliver while in office; she joins Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, who delivered one of two sons while serving in the House of Representatives in 2008. According to The Office of Personnel Management, working mothers in Congress and in the federal government are entitled to 6 weeks of paid maternity leave; new parents can take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the Family Medical Leave Act. Â
In a statement, Duckworth commented on her status as a working mother, noting that “Abigail has only made me more committed to doing my job and standing up for hardworking families everywhere.”