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A pregnant Texas woman said her unborn baby should count as a second passenger in her vehicle after she received a ticket, citing Texas’ penal code in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s being overturned.
Brandy Bottone, 32, was stopped by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department on June 29 when she entered a high-occupancy vehicle lane.
The HOV lane requires drivers to have at least one passenger in their cars when they use the lane.
“She is a person”
Bottone said that her unborn child was the second occupant of her car when a sheriff’s deputy informed her of the rule.
“I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person,’” Bottone said.
The officer informed her that the rule applies to “two people outside of the body.”
Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, told the officers that with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, her unborn child now was recognized as a living person. The US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24th.
“And then I said, ‘Well (I’m) not trying to throw a political mix here, but with everything, this counts as a baby.” She added.
Bottone said that the officer did not wish to “deal with this” and insisted that the law regarding the HOV lanes did not apply to her because the requirement was “two persons outside of the body.”
“According to the new law, this is a life”
The penal code in Texas recognizes a fetus as a person but there’s no language in the state Transportation Department’s code that recognizes a fetus as a person or a passenger.
Requests for comment from the sheriff’s department and the state transportation department were not immediately answered.
Bottone intends to fight the $215 ticket by arguing that her unborn child should be considered another occupant of her car.
“This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life,” Bottone said. “I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”
