On June 29, Brandy Bottone was pulled over after she drove on an HOV lane in Texas. Bottone was stopped by the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department, who asked her where the second passenger on the car was. Bottone pointed to her tummy: her unborn baby.
The HOV lane requires that there are at least two people in the vehicle. After seeing Bottone driving in the lane without any other person, an officer stopped her and asked where the second passenger was. “I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person,’” Bottone reported to The Dallas Morning News. “And then I said, ‘Well [I’m] not trying to throw a political mix here, but with everything going on, this counts as a baby,’” Bottone added.
Bottone said that after she told the officer the unborn baby counted as a passenger, the officer told Bottone that he “didn’t want to deal with this” and insisted that the law for HOV lanes required there to be at least “two people outside a body”.
Although the penal code in Texas recognizes an unborn baby as a person, it doesn’t say that an unborn mammal is recognized as a passenger in the Transportation Department’s code.
According to NBCNews, deputies told Bottone that if she fought her ticket, it would most likely to be dismissed. Bottone planned to fight the $215 ticket with the argument that her unborn baby should count as another passenger.
“This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life,” Bottone told The Morning News. “I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pregnant-texas-woman-says-unborn-baby-count-car-passenger-receiving-ho-rcna37531
The HOV lane requires that there are at least two people in the vehicle. After seeing Bottone driving in the lane without any other person, an officer stopped her and asked where the second passenger was. “I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person,’” Bottone reported to The Dallas Morning News. “And then I said, ‘Well [I’m] not trying to throw a political mix here, but with everything going on, this counts as a baby,’” Bottone added.
Bottone said that after she told the officer the unborn baby counted as a passenger, the officer told Bottone that he “didn’t want to deal with this” and insisted that the law for HOV lanes required there to be at least “two people outside a body”.
Although the penal code in Texas recognizes an unborn baby as a person, it doesn’t say that an unborn mammal is recognized as a passenger in the Transportation Department’s code.
According to NBCNews, deputies told Bottone that if she fought her ticket, it would most likely to be dismissed. Bottone planned to fight the $215 ticket with the argument that her unborn baby should count as another passenger.
“This has my blood boiling. How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life,” Bottone told The Morning News. “I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”
Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pregnant-texas-woman-says-unborn-baby-count-car-passenger-receiving-ho-rcna37531
