Too many politicians don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant or miscarry

I had a miscarriage the week before Mother’s Day. 

“My name is Liuba Grechen Shirley. I’m the founder and CEO of Vote Mama and a mama of three.” That’s how I introduce myself in every meeting. But until recently, every time I said three, I thought four. 

I was pregnant with our fourth child, and was at the stage where you feel like crap, but don’t tell anyone yet. I started to imagine a whole other person. I started talking to this baby. I started picturing another wild kid at dinner, adding to our chaos. I hoped for a second girl, a sister for my Mila who is often driven nuts by her two little brothers. I had visions of baking a pink cake and surprising Mila on her 9th birthday with the news. 

Instead, at our 9-week appointment, we were told there was no heartbeat and the fetus had not grown in two weeks. Having heard three beautiful heartbeats before, it never occurred to me we would not hear one this time. I took mifepristone on Monday, and misoprostol on Tuesday. I know the stats on miscarriages, but I still never imagined I would be experiencing my own. 

My body thought I was still pregnant and I had to take medicine to pass a fetus that would have grown into our fourth child, the baby who would have made Andrew a big brother. Our kids came home from school and our daughter saw me crying. She thought they were happy tears at first, and screamed, “are we having a baby?!” My heart broke even more, and we told them the truth.

I spent days bleeding chunks of uterine lining and fetal tissue, and vomiting, and sobbing. No man who has ever voted to ban mifepristone has had this experience. It’s completely theoretical to them.

As I sat on the exam table, tears streaming down my face, they handed me the pill. The pill that I had been reading about in the news for months. The pill that a Trump-appointed Texas judge had recently banned. The pill that is banned in 14 states. And I thought how helpless I would be if I lived in a red state where the government, and not my doctor, decided my medical treatment, where I would not only be dealing with my heart shattering, but also panicking about how politicians’ personal beliefs would dictate my next steps. Life has a funny way of reminding you how policy affects the most intimate moments of our existence, how all politics are, often gut-wrenchingly, personal.

I learned that our baby’s heart stopped beating the morning my organization, Vote Mama, launched our new Politics of Parenthood report. Our groundbreaking research revealed that only 5% of 2020 state legislators were moms of minor children, and fewer than 7% of our Congress members are moms of minors.

Even though 85% of American women are mothers by the time we are 45 years old, only 37 moms of minors currently serve in Congress.

But why does that matter? Because lived experience matters. Because political decisions affect every aspect of our lives, and because too many of our legislators are charged with solving challenges they have never personally faced. 

We need more mom politicians

Our nation is forcing women to flee their states to receive abortions and forcing women who want to be pregnant to carry nonviable fetuses to term, because too many politicians do not know what it is like to be pregnant or to miscarry. Our nation is forcing women to go back to work days after childbirth while they are still swollen, in stitches, in agony, because too many politicians have never given birth. 

Legislators legislate based on their lived experience. 

Oklahoma State Senator Jessica Garvin, a mom, recently introduced a bill that would provide six weeks paid maternity leave for state employees who have been employed by the state for at least two years. Senator Shane Jett argued against the bill, calling maternity leave a “paid vacation,” while Senator Rob Standridge said he didn’t want to “make it the utopian job in Oklahoma.” Paid Vacation. Utopia. 

Two weeks after I gave birth to our second child, Nicholas, I spiked a 105-degree fever while home alone with our two babies. I felt myself slipping out of consciousness and called a friend to come get me. She got me to the hospital, where my mom and husband met us, and I was admitted. I had retained placenta from Nicholas’ birth and got a massive infection. I was hospitalized for one week and then sent home with IV antibiotics for a week after that. At four weeks postpartum, I was sick as a dog, with an IV in, nursing two babies. I was in no shape to put on pants, hand over my infant to strangers, and head into the office. And yet, that is what millions of American women are forced to do every day.

Childbirth is no joke. Recovery is no joke. Paid family leave is not a vacation. Moms know that. 

So why do we have more millionaires in Congress than moms of minor children? And why do we have three times more men named John in the U.S. Senate than moms of minor children?

Because Congress was specifically designed for wealthy older white men to run and serve, and not for moms caring for little ones. Eighteen hour days, non-stop travel between districts and the nation’s capital, constituent meetings, town halls, knocking on doors, pancake breakfasts, fundraisers, committee meetings, hearings, votes, and what seems like a never-ending election cycle. All this is immeasurably more daunting for caregivers, particularly women who have or want to have children. 

Moms know the challenges that women, kids and working families face at a visceral level—but too often are unheard because we are systemically kept out of the conversation, out of office, and out of power. But we can change this. 

When I ran for Congress in 2018 with two toddlers, I quickly realized why more moms weren’t running—the political system wasn’t built for us. After my campaign, I launched Vote Mama PAC, to help elect moms from the School Board to the U.S. Senate, our nonpartisan nonprofit arm, Vote Mama Foundation, to break down the cultural and structural barriers moms face when they run and when they serve, and Vote Mama Lobby, our advocacy arm to mobilize everyday moms to volunteer for mama candidates and to advocate for truly family-friendly legislation.

It was other moms who showed me the ropes when I ran for Congress—who told me how they manage a schedule of nursing and door-knocking and call-time and school drop-offs. It was also other moms who had experienced pregnancy loss who comforted me during that week, who made me feel less alone in my pain. Nearly every friend I told had also had at least one if not many miscarriages, but no one talks about it. One friend even called it a “secret society.” But we need to talk about pregnancy loss. We need to talk about the realities of motherhood in America. Moms are incredible, and our stories need to be heard everywhere, especially in the halls of power. 

Running for and serving in office as a mom is an all too lonely experience—there are simply not enough of us at the table. It is Vote Mama’s mission to change that. So while I crawled into the fetal position and cried after my miscarriage, my team held down the fort, because this work cannot stop. Our nation’s policies have failed women and children for generations. To pass meaningful reform, we need to get moms in all the places where decisions are being made.