Highlights
- A woman from America's Texas argued her unborn baby counts as a passenger.
- Brandy Bottone from Dallas cited the US Supreme Court's recent ruling to support her argument.
- She was eight months pregnant when she was pulled over by a traffic official on June 29.
Abortion ruling US: In a peculiar incident, a woman from America's Texas on Monday argued that the unborn baby in her womb counts as a person, and hence should be considered a passenger in a car in an HOV lane. Brandy Bottone from Dallas cited the United States Supreme Court's recent ruling on abortion where it overturned Roe v. Wade. She pointed to her pregnant belly and told an officer who pulled her over that her unborn daughter now counts as a person. She was driving in a lane reserved for vehicles carrying at least two people.
“I said, Well, not trying to throw a political mix here, but with everything going on, this counts as a baby,” said Bottone, who was eight months pregnant when she was pulled over on June 29. Bottone plans to fight the ticket in court next week. Her story was first reported by The Dallas Morning News. “I was driving to pick up my son. I knew I couldn’t be a minute late, so I took the HOV lane,” she said.
Bottone’s ticket came five days after the Supreme Court stripped away women’s constitutional protections for abortion. The ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states. In Texas, the fall of Roe put in motion a trigger law that will ban virtually all abortions in the coming weeks and defines an unborn child as a living human from fertilization to birth. And in the meantime, a ruling by the Texas Supreme Court led to clinics halting abortion services.
Bottone said the stand she’s taking on the ticket isn’t for or against abortion, but that the law should be uniform. “If there’s a pro-women category, that’s my stance,” she said. “One law is saying that this is a baby and now he’s telling me this baby that’s jabbing my ribs is not a baby,” said Bottone, 32. “Why can’t it all make sense?”
Last year in Texas, a law banning most abortions after about six weeks — before many women know they are pregnant — took effect. Dallas attorney Chad Ruback said different judges might have different takes on Bottone's argument.
(With AP Inputs)
