A 36-year-old Bangladeshi-origin British lawmaker has delayed giving birth to vote on the UK’s landmark divorce deal with the European Union on Tuesday.
Tulip Siddiq, a Labour lawmaker and a niece of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has been advised by doctors to have a caesarean section, but agreed to push the procedure back to Thursday so she can vote on the Brexit deal Tuesday in the House of Commons.
By her decision, the Opposition lawmaker from Hampstead and Kilburn, has reigniting the debate over proxy voting in Parliament, the BBC reported.
Siddiq told the Evening Standard that she had a difficult first pregnancy with her two-year-old daughter, and was originally due to give birth to her second child by elective caesarean section on February 4.
But after developing gestational diabetes, her doctors recommended she bring the date forward to a delivery this Monday or Tuesday. She spoke to medical staff at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London, and they agreed to the delay.
Siddiq said: “If my son enters the world even one day later than the doctors advised, but it’s a world with a
better chance of a strong relationship between Britain and Europe, then that’s worth fighting for.”
