Dallas Morning News (“Pregnant woman says her fetus should count as a passenger in HOV lanes. She got a ticket“):
In economics, they call it the law of unintended consequences.
An event ultimately produces an outcome, sometimes negative, that was not expected.
That’s what is happening to Brandy Bottone of Plano, a mother who is 34 weeks into her pregnancy.
On June 29 she was driving on U.S. Highway 75 South and headed to the Interstate 635 West interchange. But she had to slam on the brakes because … well, I’ll let her tell the story:
“I was driving to pick up my son. I knew I couldn’t be a minute late, so I took the HOV [high-occupancy vehicle] lane. As I exited the HOV, there was a checkpoint at the end of the exit. I slammed on my brakes, and I was pulled over by police.
“An officer peeked in and asked, ‘Is there anybody else in the car?’
“I said, ‘Well, yes.’
“He asked, ‘Where?’
“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.’
“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. ‘So I don’t know why you’re not seeing that,’ I said.
“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.’
“But they still gave me a ticket. So my $215 ticket was written to cause inconvenience?
“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.”
It’s difficult to discern from the text whether the woman is a moron or an epic troll. Either way, the contention is amusing.
I asked Amy O’Donnell, spokeswoman for Texas Alliance for Life, an anti-abortion group, what she thought of this unusual situation.
She replied, “While the penal code in Texas recognizes an unborn child as a person in our state, the Texas Transportation Code does not specify the same. And a child residing in a mother’s womb is not taking up an extra seat. And with only one occupant taking up a seat, the car did not meet the criteria needed to drive in that lane.”
It’s not at all unusual for something to meet a definition in some instances and not others. In this case, it’s perfectly reasonable to consider the unborn child a person in a criminal context but not for the purposes of an HOV lane.
If one murders a pregnant woman and thereby also kills her unborn child—or assaults her, thereby killing the child—the harm to the community and to the victim’s loved ones is undeniably higher than if she had not been pregnant.
At the same time, considering that the fetus is physically unable to occupy a separate seat in the car, it makes no sense to count it as an additional vehicle occupant. Then again, since HOV lanes became part of my life 20 years ago, considered it absurd to count children under the legal driving age—a position formed when I was single and maintained the last 13 years despite having children. The whole point is to encourage people to consolidate trips in order to reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption, pollution, and the like. The kids aren’t going to be driving. (This, of course, is only true if it’s one’s own kids. Neighborhood carpools to alternate taking multiple kids to school or various activities would, indeed, meet the intent of the law.)
Further, were we to take Bottone’s argument seriously, the officer should have ticketed her for having a baby in the front seat. Clearly, at that age, it should have been in a rear-facing car seat.
