Democrats in Congress have little tolerance for anyone attempting to place any limits on abortion in order to protect unborn children. And they appear to have little tolerance for disabled pregnant women either.
Despite national attention for their decision to prevent Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee veteran, to cast her vote for party leadership from her home in Illinois, where she is pregnant and unable to travel, they haven’t relented.
Duckworth, who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down in the Iraq War in 2004, sent a letter to Democratic House leadership requesting to cast her vote by proxy. But Democrats said that would open to the door to all sorts of requests to be exempted from voting in person.
According to a Roll Call article, the Nancy Pelosi-led Democrats still won’t back down. And you know it’s bad when even pro-abortion Debbie Wasserman Schultz head of the Democratic Party, complains:
House Democrats are continuing to pick at Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to allow Rep. Tammy Duckworth — a double amputee Iraq War veteran whose pregnancy has made her unable to travel — to vote by proxy in leadership elections this week.
Pelosi and her allies have been saying since Nov. 13, when the issue first came up, that House Democratic Caucus rules prohibit proxy votes, and that allowing exceptions for the Illinois Democrat would create a slippery-slope scenario.
Members and aides are privately seething over what they see as Pelosi’s latest attempt to stack the deck against Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., who is running for ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee against Pelosi’s closest friend and fellow Californian, Rep. Anna G. Eshoo.
And many members are concerned about the optics of not allowing Duckworth a proxy vote when Democrats are supposed to be the party that fights for women. Democrats have tried to make electoral gains by touting the “When Women Succeed, America Succeeds” economic agenda.
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“Our party should be the party that stands up for women,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida said in a caucus meeting Tuesday morning, according to a source in the room.
A source also said that civil-rights icon and longtime Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis was fighting Pelosi’s refusal: “We will pay a price for not doing this,” he reportedly said.
Pelosi reiterated her decision at a news conference Monday, telling reporters: “The rules of the caucus are the same as the rules of the House. No proxy voting. … The fact is is that it’s really important to be here, to be in caucus. It’s more important to vote on the floor. If I were to make a fight, I’d vote to have a proxy vote on the floor than in whatever’s going on in the caucus.”
