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Texas: She was fined for driving in a passenger lane and she showed her belly

A pregnant woman from Texasin which he indulged fine for driving in the HOV lane (bus lane or multi-occupant vehicle) argued that the Supreme Court’s abolition of abortion rights meant that her fetus counted as a passenger and she should not have been fined.

Brandy Bottone was driving on a major freeway in Dallas when she was stopped for a check to see if there was at least one other person in the vehicle so she could be allowed to drive in that lane. The sheriff’s deputy looked inside the car and, according to her description in the Washington Post, asked her, “Are you alone or is there a passenger?”

“I answered him: “oh, there are two of us”. And he asked: “where is the second one?” describes herself as being 34 weeks pregnant at the time of the incident.

She replied that “her baby was there”, pointing to her belly, only to receive the answer that “there must be two bodies”. Although the state’s penal code recognizes it embryo as an individual, the same is not true of the Texas Traffic Code.

“The one cop kind of disrespected me when I mentioned that this was a live child, as defined by the overturning of Roe v Wade. “So I don’t know why you don’t see this,” I told them, she continues.

Botton was fined $215 for driving with a driver/passenger in an improper lane, a fine she plans to challenge in court this month.

“I will fight for it,” warned the 32-year-old about her case, which puts the state’s legal framework in uncharted waters, after the historic developments in USA.

“I find her argument creative, but I don’t think under the current Texas traffic code she’s likely to win in court. She’s unlikely to find a judge who will reward her for her ingenuity,” said Chad Ruback, a Dallas attorney.

The incident, which took place on June 29, happened at a time when the country was shaken by the reactions to the overturning Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court that effectively overturned the constitutional right to abortion after nearly 50 years.

Texas state representative Brian Harrison promised Saturday night to introduce legislation to fix the … language in the traffic code.

“Unborn babies are persons (which means they are also passengers) and should be treated accordingly under Texas law,” he wrote in a tweet. “Brandy, keep fighting for that fine!”


Source: News Beast

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