Pregnant woman in Texas using Roe v Wade reversal to fight car-pool ticket

‘How could this be fair? According to this new law, this is a life’

A woman in Texas is arguing that if the Supreme Court views the foetus inside her uterus as a human life, then that logic should also apply to the rules of the road, or more specifically, the car-pool lane.

On 29 June, just five days after the Supreme Court voted to overturnRoe v Wade, the 1973 decision that had affirmed the constitutional right to abortion across the country, Brandy Bottone, who is 34 weeks pregnant, found herself getting stopped by police after she exited the high-occupancy vehicle lane (HOV) with just herself in the car.

“Is there anyone else in the car?” Ms Bottone said the police officer asked, while recounting her story to The Dallas Morning News. “I said, ‘Well, yes,’” the Plano-native told the news outlet, adding that she’d gestured at her stomach and explained that she was just weeks away from delivering a baby girl who would soon be occupying a baby seat in her vehicle.

“Oh, no. It’s got to be two people outside of the body,” the officer said to her, according to Ms Bottone.

Ms Bottone says that she cited the then just days ago Supreme Court decision to the officer, but he ultimately brushed it off and landed her with a $275 ticket.

The Texas Department of Transportation website states that vehicles that are permitted to use the HOV lanes must be “occupied by two or more people or a motorcyclist”.

Brandy Bottone is 34 weeks pregnant and believes that gave her the right to use the car-pool lane despite a cop giving her a $275 ticket for being the only ‘person’ in the vehicle (NBC DFW/video screengrab)

The transportation code does not specify whether pregnant persons are counted as two people, but undergirding Ms Bettone’s challenge of her ticket could be the state’s own penal code which stipulates that an unborn child is considered a human being.

Passed in September 2021, and further supported since the reversal of Roe v Wade in June, the Lone Star State’s Heartbeat Act prohibits abortion procedures from being carried out after six weeks, or after embryonic or foetal cardiac activity is detected.

“This has my blood boiling,” said Ms Bottone. “How could this be fair? According to this new law, this is a life.”

The pregnant mother plans to challenge the ticket in court on 20 July, and whether she wins or loses, she says, doesn’t change the fact that she’s outraged at the double standard.

“I really don’t think it’s right because one law is saying it one way, but another law is saying it another way,” she told NBC DFW in an interview following the incident.

A Dallas appellate lawyer who spoke to the news outlet for the story says that Ms Bottone’s challenge presents an interesting point and reveals the potential legal cases that can crop up in the wake of Roe’s reversal.

“This is unchartered territory we’re in now,” said Chad Ruback. “There is no Texas statute that says what to do in this situation.”