A pregnant Dallas woman cited for driving by herself in an HOV lane is fighting her ticket because she says her unborn baby should count as a second person.
Brandy Bottone, who is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy, says she was stopped at a Sheriff’s checkpoint on the Central Expressway and was ticketed for driving alone in an HOV lane.
Bottone told the officer that her unborn baby should count as a second person in the car because the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
The officer issued the woman a $275 ticket.
She plans on fighting the ticket in court.
Legal experts argue that while Texas views an unborn baby as a person, the transportation code does not, NBCDFW reported.
NBCDFW reported:
A pregnant Plano woman who got a ticket for driving alone in an HOV lane plans to fight the citation, arguing her unborn baby should count as a second person.
The woman, Brandy Bottone, was driving down Central Expressway approaching the exit for I-635 when she was stopped at a sheriff’s checkpoint targeting HOV drivers breaking the rules. By law, in order to use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, drivers must have at least one passenger in the vehicle.
“He starts peeking around. He’s like, ‘Is it just you?’ And I said, ‘No there’s two of us?’” Bottone said. “And he said, ‘Well where’s the other person.’ And I went, ‘right here,’” pointing to her stomach.
At the time of the incident last month, she was 34 weeks pregnant.
But the officer told her that doesn’t count.
“And then I said, ‘Well (I’m) not trying to throw a political mix here, but with everything going on (with Roe v. Wade), this counts as a baby,’” she said.
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