Does a fetus count in the carpool lane? Texas’ abortion law creates new questions about legal personhood

When a pregnant North Texas woman was pulled over for driving alone in a high-occupancy vehicle lane, she protested.

“I just felt that there were two of us in [the car] and I was wrongly getting ticketed,” the driver, Brandy Bottone, told The Dallas Morning News in July.

Bottone argued that under Texas’ abortion laws, which went into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, a fetus is considered a living being. She argued the same should be true when it comes to the state’s traffic laws.