My Tammy Duckworth Moment

Tammy Duckworth, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel and combat veteran who lost both her legs and badly damaged an arm when the helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade, thereafter ran successfully for the House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate from Illinois. She has been advocating for military and disability issues ever since she took Congressional office in 2013.

Not long ago Senator Duckworth responded to a Trump tweet accusing Democrats of “holding our Military hostage” to have “unchecked illegal immigration”; she spoke from the Senate floor blasting Donald Trump as a “five-deferment draft dodger” who is trying to bait North Korea into a war, risking the country’s national security and the U.S. military.

(Duckworth has also referred publicly to Trump as “Cadet Bone-Spurs,” harkening back to the purported bone spurs on Trump’s feet that excused Trump—via a fifth military deferment—from being drafted to serve in Vietnam once his four previous college academic deferments ended.)

Senator Duckworth recently bore her second child, and was faced with the problem of bringing her newborn daughter onto the Senate floor for votes, the Senate having had a long-standing rule against the presence of children in the Senate chamber. Senator Duckworth uses a wheelchair, which adds to the obstacles inherent in voting in the Senate chamber.

Since voting must be in person on the Senate floor, and Duckworth is keenly aware of the many close votes in the current bitterly divided Senate in recent months prior to the birth of her baby, the Senator lobbied for a rules change to permit senators with newborns to bring babies onto the floor of the Senate.

When faced with the prospect of newborn infant Maile gaining floor privileges in the Senate, some of the older male senators grumbled that permitting babies on the floor of the Senate would disrupt Senate decorum. Diaper changes, fussing, and even (horrors!) nursing on the Senate floor. Harrumph!

Some senators proposed a compromise whereby a baby could be permitted in the Senate cloakroom, a lounge just off the Senate chamber, where a senator could stand in the doorway and still participate in Senate business. Since the cloakroom is not wheelchair-accessible, that would not solve the problem for Duckworth or for some other potential future senatorial parents of newborns.

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a prolific father, grandfather, and great-grandfather in his 80s, posited, “But what if there are 10 babies on the floor of the Senate?” To which Senator Amy Klobuchar remarked that such a situation would mean that more young senators had been elected and “would be a delight.”

Senator Marco Rubio said sarcastically that he would not object to having babies on the floor since there are “plenty of babies [already] on the floor.”

One Richard Armande Mills posted on Facebook that “Duckworth could potentially ‘weaponize’ her baby because infants haven’t previously been allowed in this arena. What if she uses the presence of her child to influence legislation?” (Weaponize an infant how? Encourage it to cry?)

Women who read this sigh and dismiss such absurdities, but too many men take them seriously. Perhaps if more men cared for young children—and worked at the same time—we would be spared such comments.

The entire kerfuffle reminds me of a time, nearly thirty-five years ago, when I was a young attorney with a newborn daughter. My infant had, that fateful day, developed a cold, and her daycare provider asked me to retrieve her to keep the other children from being infected.

I had been representing a woman whose rental tenant had fallen behind in the rent and she was seeking a judgment of eviction. As cases go, this was a simple one with few contested facts.

My client had elected to retain new counsel for no obvious reason, which was her prerogative, and I expected successor counsel to contact me to obtain the file and briefly discuss the case.

But I heard from no-one, and as the case progressed to the day of trial I was subpoenaed to bring the file and appear as a witness in court.

This action contravened all the unwritten rules of advocacy among counsel; cooperation and not confrontation was the traditional manner of transferring representation, and I was fully prepared to assist new counsel in any reasonable way.

The young pup who took on the case may have been trying to impress the landlady plaintiff; I never could understand his motivation.

But one thing was clear: I resented his treatment of me as a hostile witness when I was in actuality merely previous counsel without an axe to grind.

Nevertheless, I had a date to appear in court and my infant child needed a caretaker. So I scooped her up and brought her to the courthouse.

The judge, a part-timer with a supercilious manner (who was once investigated for potential ties to organized crime), demanded to know why I had appeared with a babe in arms, and my explanation didn’t seem to mollify him.

“I should hold you in contempt of court,” he threatened, peering down at us from the bench.

I waited to see what would happen. A long pause ensued. But the judge was nonplussed and eventually let the case, such as it was, go forward.

As things transpired, there was no contretemps, and upon request under oath I surrendered my file and testified to the minimal facts of the case, facts that favored the evicting landlady.

And then I left the courthouse, child in arms, to go home.

So, Senator Duckworth, I’ve been down that road before, risking a jail term or fine for contempt of court for the offense of bringing a babe in arms into a courthouse and—heaven forbid—onto the witness stand.

Much ado about nothing except that parenting knows no artificial limits but must be respected in all its usual and ordinary manifestations.

To make silly rules about when and where babies may appear in a public forum is the height of absurdity. Women instinctively know this and men are centuries overdue to learn this