DRIVING FOR TWO

Pregnant Woman Uses Roe Reversal to Fight Car-Pool Lane Ticket

“I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person.’”

A pregnant Texas woman used the reversal of Roe v Wade to argue she should be allowed to drive in a car-pool lane, since the baby she was carrying “is a life.” By law, in order to use the high-occupancy vehicle lanes, drivers must have at least one passenger. But in Brandy Bottone’s eyes, she did. In her uterus. Bottone was randomly stopped by a Dallas County Sheriff Department officer and given a ticket, The Dallas Morning News reported. “I pointed to my stomach and said, ‘My baby girl is right here. She is a person.’ He said, ‘Oh, no. It’s got to be two people outside of the body,’” she told the newspaper. Though Texas penal code recognizes an unborn child as a person, the transportation code doesn’t. Bottone isn’t letting up anytime soon, though—she’s fighting the ticket in court on July 20. “This has my blood boiling,” she said. “How could this be fair? According to the new law, this is a life. I know this may fall on deaf ears, but as a woman, this was shocking.”