DALLAS – A pregnant Texas woman says her unborn baby should count as a second passenger in her vehicle after she received a traffic citation, citing Texas’ penal code in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s being overturned.
Brandy Bottone, 32, of Plano, was pulled over on June 29 after she drove in an HOV lane, or high-occupancy vehicle lane, according to NBC-Dallas Fort Worth. Bottone was stopped by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, which was out looking for drivers violating the HOV lane regulations.
HOV lane rules require drivers to have at least one passenger in their cars when they use the lane.
When a sheriff’s deputy told Bottone about the rule, she said she did have a second occupant in her car — her unborn baby.
“I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person,'” Bottone told The Dallas Morning News, which had first reported the story.
The officer responded that the rule applies to “two people outside of the body.”
But 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 – something conservative politicians in Texas and elsewhere have been arguing in their anti-abortion rhetoric. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on June 24.
Bottone said Texas can’t have it both ways when it comes to how it recognizes the unborn.
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