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A Texas woman is turning the tables on anti-abortion lawmakers after receiving a $215 traffic ticket.
Brandy Bottone of Plano was 34 weeks pregnant when she told Dallas County Sheriff Department officers that her unborn fetus counts as a passenger and therefore gives her the right to use the carpool lane.
She made her point following theSupreme Court’s decision to overturn 1973’sRoe v. Wadeand the constitutional right to abortion.
Battone said the cop told her the HOV lane requires two passengers, meaning “two people outside of the body.” According to the Texaspenal code, the term “‘Individual’ means a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth.”
DSPD did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Protestors outside the Supreme Court.Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty
“One officer kind of brushed me off when I mentioned this is a living child, according to everything that’s going on with the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” she continued. “‘So I don’t know why you’re not seeing that,’ I said.
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“He was like, ‘I don’t want to deal with this.’ He said, ‘Ma’am, it means two persons outside of the body.’ He waved me on to the next cop who gave me a citation and said, ‘If you fight it, it will most likely get dropped,'” Bottone added.
Bottone claims the ticket was “written to cause inconvenience,” adding: “This has my blood boiling. 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.”
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Her court date is set for July 20, and she said, “I will be fighting it.”
Meanwhile, PresidentJoe Bidenhas doubled down on his pro-choice support,signing an executive order to ensure access to abortionand the “safety of patients, providers, and third parties” on Friday.
“I’m asking the Justice Department that, much like they did in the Civil Rights era, to do everything in their power to protect these women seeking to invoke their rights,” Biden, 79, said Friday.
RELATED VIDEO: Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade, Eliminating the Constitutional Right to Abortion
Last month’s6-to-3 rulingreversed nearly 50 years of precedent, giving states the power to pass their own laws around abortion. Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and South Dakota are among those that have alreadybanned abortion in their states, afterputting trigger laws in placethat governors enacted following the SCOTUS ruling.
Texaspassed its own highly restrictive anti-abortion lawlast year. Referred to as the “heartbeat ban,” the legislation prohibits the procedure after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, the earliest being six weeks which is before most people know they are pregnant.
source: people.com
