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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.
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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.
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“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.
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