A pregnant woman in Texas who was fined for driving alone in a carpool lane said her fetus should be counted as a passenger after her abortion was reversed in the US last month.
Brandi Bouton, 34, pregnant, has protested the traffic penalty given to her for driving in a carpool lane. (AP photo)
A pregnant woman in Texas who was fined for driving alone in a carpool lane said her fetus should be counted as a passenger in the wake of strict new abortion laws.
Brandi Bouton, 32 years and 34 weeks pregnant, has vowed to go to court after being pulled over in Dallas and punished by a police officer last month.
She was driving in a lane reserved for vehicles carrying at least two people—a fact she didn’t dispute.
But Botton told a police officer that her unborn child was a person in the eyes of the law, after the United States Supreme Court just days earlier overturned a decades-long federal law guaranteeing abortions to women.
“He said, ‘Is there anyone else in the car? Botton told CNN on Sunday.
“I pointed to my stomach and I was like, ‘Okay,'” she recalled.
When the policeman said that being pregnant “doesn’t count” because the two individuals must be “outside the body”, Botton insisted that “it’s a baby.”
The Texas Criminal Code, like many conservative states, recognizes a fetus as a “person,” but this does not apply to laws governing transportation.
and also before the turn of Rowe Weade last monthA new Texas law banned nearly all abortions after six weeks—before many women even knew they were pregnant.
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