Pregnant woman in HOV lane to challenge ticket

 Houston Chronicle:

Is an unborn fetus a human being in the eyes of...Texas traffic laws?

A pregnant Dallas-area woman argued as much to police officers after recently being cited for driving alone in the HOV lane, according to a story published Friday afternoon by the Dallas Morning News' Dave Lieber.

Lieber reports that Plano resident Brandy Bettone was driving along U.S. Highway 75 en route to picking up her son when she found herself at a checkpoint facing a citation for using the high-occupancy vehicle lane while alone in her car.

"I was driving to pick up my son. I knew I couldn't be a minute late, so I took the HOV lane," Bettone told Lieber. "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."

Bettone said officers asked her if there were any more occupants inside her vehicle. Pregnant with a daughter, Bettone told the officers her unborn child was inside the vehicle with her, according to Lieber.

"I pointed to my stomach and said, 'My baby girl is right here. She is a person,'" Bettone said. However the officers were not buying it. "He said, 'Oh, no. It's got to be two people outside of the body.'"

Bettone spoke with multiple officers over the course of her encounter, she told Lieber. One seemed indifferent, Bettone claimed, while another gave her a citation and told her to challenge it in court to have it thrown out.
...

I think she has an interesting case that has some support from the Texas abortion law.  I would let her off. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains

James Robbins: ... Bin Laden suggests that President Bush should allow Zarqawi’s body to be returned to his family in Jordan, but this is a matter that is up to the Jordanian government, which so far has not shown much interest in facilitating a homecoming. Bin Laden mocks King Abdullah II, calling him a Coalition minion, and asking “w hat scares you about Abu Musab after he’s dead? You know that his funeral, if allowed to happen, would be a huge funeral showing the extent of sympathy with the mujahedin.” A large crowd would definitely turn out, though most people would be on hand to demonstrate their anger and disgust. Last November’s hotel bombings in Amman , masterminded by Zarqawi, are still fresh in people’s memory, and mentioning them to Jordanians has the same visceral impact as memory of the 9/11 attacks does here. Jordan has adopted a zero-tolerance policy towards those who choose to mourn the country’s least favorite son, and four opposition members of parliament who paid con
Read more