Tammy Duckworth: The mother making history in the US Senate

Tammy Duckworth is used to being a trailblazer.
A double amputee, she was the first disabled woman elected to the US Congress.
Born in Bangkok to a Thai mother and American father, she was also among the first Asian-American women in Congress.
And now, as confirmed in a gleeful tweet this week, she will be the first woman to have a baby while serving in the US Senate.
It was "about damn time", the 49-year-old said. "I can't believe it took until 2018."
On the day Donald Trump defied the odds to defeat Hillary Clinton in November 2016, Tammy Duckworth made her own journey - soundly defeating the Republican incumbent to become the junior senator for Illinois, the position held by Barack Obama when he won the presidency.
Her election came four days shy of the anniversary of the event that shaped her later life.
"I'm here because of the miracles that occurred 12 years ago this Saturday - above and in a dusty field in Iraq," she said in her victory speech.
Among the people she thanked were her former military comrades: the men who saved her life after the helicopter she was co-piloting over Iraq was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
You may find some of the following details distressing
Duckworth was a captain with the Illinois National Guard when she was called up to serve in Iraq. It was a war she disagreed with, but she fully accepted the responsibility to go there and fight.
She did not have to go to Iraq. She was no longer in charge of her former unit when they were called to serve, but she asked to go with them.
"You don't want anyone to face danger and you not face the same danger," she told an episode of The Axe Files podcast in December 2016. "You have to face the same risk."

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