Berliner Tageblatt - Pregnant Texas driver argues fetus is passenger after carpool fine

NYSE - LSE
RELX 0.51% 47.05 $
RYCEF 1.59% 6.91 $
RBGPF 1.61% 62 $
RIO 0.47% 62.32 $
BTI 0.61% 37.94 $
CMSC -0.2% 24.52 $
GSK 0.9% 34.33 $
BP 0.58% 29.13 $
SCS -0.52% 13.47 $
NGG 0.79% 63.33 $
VOD 1.23% 8.97 $
BCC -1.37% 146.4 $
AZN 1.25% 67.2 $
BCE 1.44% 27.02 $
CMSD -0.29% 24.36 $
JRI 1.27% 13.41 $
Pregnant Texas driver argues fetus is passenger after carpool fine
Pregnant Texas driver argues fetus is passenger after carpool fine / Photo: © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Pregnant Texas driver argues fetus is passenger after carpool fine

A pregnant woman in Texas who was fined for driving solo in a carpool lane said her fetus must be counted as a passenger in the wake of strict new abortion laws.

Text size:

Brandy Bottone, 32 years old and 34 weeks pregnant, has vowed to go to court after she was pulled over in Dallas and handed a penalty by a police officer last month.

She was driving in a lane reserved for vehicles carrying at least two people -- a fact she did not dispute.

But Bottone told a police officer that her unborn child was a person in the eyes of the law, as the United States Supreme Court had days earlier reversed decades-standing federal law guaranteeing women access to abortion.

"He said, 'Is there somebody else in the car?'" Bottone told CNN on Sunday.

"I pointed at my stomach and I was like, 'Right here,'" she recalled.

When the policeman said that being pregnant "doesn't count" as the two persons must be "outside the body," Bottone insisted that "this is a baby."

The Texas criminal code, like that of many conservative states, recognizes a fetus as a "person," but this does not appear to apply for laws regulating transportation.

Even before Roe v Wade was overturned last month, a new Texas law had banned almost all abortions after six weeks -- before many women even know they are pregnant.

I.Meyer--BTB