A fundamental question in the abortion debate: when does one’s life begin? — raises problems that extend far into everyday life.
Maybe even who is allowed to drive in an HOV track.
Last month, Brandy Bottone of Plano, Texas, was stopped by a Dallas sheriff and ticketed for driving alone in a busy lane. But, she argued, she wasn’t alone. Ms. Bottone told the officer she had committed no offense because, by her logic, the Texas abortion ban meant that there were two people in her car, and she pointed to her stomach.
“The law says two or more persons; and I counted the baby as a person,” said Ms Bottone, who was in her third trimester of pregnancy. “So I was like, that makes sense to me.” She got a $275 ticket.
Ms Bottone’s defense, first reported in local outlets, including: The Dallas Morning News, was considered unusual by many, and the specific case stakes may seem relatively low. But legal experts said in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overthrow of Roe v. WadeThe incident raised a host of complicated legal and philosophical questions about what defines a person and how shifting definitions could soon trickle down into other aspects of policy.
The Texas Criminal Code recognizes a person as inclusive an unborn child “at any stage of pregnancy”, but, unlike a few states, Texas has not passed a so-called fetal personality law regarding abortion. Some legal experts said it was questionable whether the state’s definition would protect a pregnant woman at a traffic stop.
“There’s a difference between banning abortion and legally recognizing personality,” said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who has written several books on abortion and the law.
Many states, including Texas and California, define a fetus as a person in murder cases.
For example, one of the victims in a 2017 mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, was a woman who was pregnant. Texas including the unborn child in its final casualty count.
In another high-profile case, Scott Peterson was convicted in California in 2004 of: murder of his wife and unborn child† His wife, Laci Peterson, was eight months pregnant when she was murdered.
Even if it seemed unlikely that Mrs Bottone’s objection to her traffic fine for driving alone in a carpool lane would gain much legal traction, it raised the prospect of future legal – and philosophical – debates.
“I think what this person is saying is more like anticipating where the law might go than where it is now,” said Professor Ziegler. “I don’t think we’ll see the end of these arguments in other conservative states, even if Texas law doesn’t support this particular woman yet.”
Ms Bottone, a 32-year-old marketing director and mother of three, said she was not trying to make a statement about abortion or the Supreme Court decision. She said she did not consider herself for or against abortion rights, and declined to share her views on the court’s destruction of Roe. Ms Bottone said she is expected to give birth to her fourth child in early August and sees a “34 week old baby as a person”.
In the end, Ms Bottone said she just wanted to know if she could continue riding the HOV track for the rest of her pregnancy, as she said with her previous pregnancies, long before Roe had a fall. She said she was looking forward to her court date on July 20, two weeks before her baby is expected.
Advocacy groups, however, spoke about the matter in the context of the wider abortion debate.
Kim Schwartz, a spokeswoman for Texas Right to Life, the largest anti-abortion organization in the state, said in a statement that it supported Ms. Bottone, along with the idea that fetuses “should be recognized as Texans in all parts of society.” .
Some abortion rights advocates also posted praising Ms Bottone for seemingly pointing to a possible consequence of last month’s Supreme Court decision. Ms. Bottone “is my new feminist hero,” Andrea Harrington, a western Massachusetts district attorney, said on Twitter, adding, “The absurdity and misogyny behind criminalizing women’s health care is inescapable.”
Three states have enacted language in the past decade that broadly defines an unborn child as a person. Alabama passed an amendment to the state constitution in 2018 that “guarantees the rights of the unborn child through all lawful and appropriate means and measures.” Georgia passed a law in 2019 recognizing the personality of fetal life, and Arizona passed in 2021.
Since the provisions were all passed in the era of Roe, when abortion was established as a constitutional right, they were immediately challenged in the courts and have yet to come into effect. On Monday, Arizona’s fetal personality law was temporarily blocked when a US court ruled it was “unbearably vague because it is completely unclear what it means to interpret and interpret Arizona’s law to promote the equal rights of the unborn.” acknowledge’.”
But since the Supreme Court made its ruling last month, Prof. Ziegler said, debates about fetuses and personality have represented a next step for anti-abortion activists†
Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said adopting a fetal personality norm would create new complications in many areas of government policy. It could create new uncertainties around issues related to in vitro fertilization and the treatment of fertilized embryosas well as exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape and incest.
Voting initiatives to define life as beginning at conception have failed in states like Colorado and Mississippi, after medical providers warned that such laws could make some IVF procedures illegal.
Prof. dr. Ziegler said a new legal definition of fetal personality could also have profound implications for things like well-being, tax credits, childcare and even population numbers.
“Georgia law states that if a fetus is six weeks old, you can claim that person as dependent on tax returns,” she said. “That fetus is basically counted as a person for census purposes.”
Neelam Bohra and Kate Zernike contributed reporting.