You just got nine months older

We try to keep it fairly light here at Castles In The Sand, but we view things with an even eye. Things are either one way, or they aren't. 

F'rinstance, it is thoroughly illegal to hold up a bank, and no legislature would dream of passing a law that makes it legal for people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own to stop by at the First National and withdraw enough at gunpoint to see them through.

Zoning laws exist to keep your crazy neighbor from turning his backyard into an auto graveyard.

And there is but one speed limit on each road or highway, so even though you are piloting a really hot vintage Mustang around the Beltway, you don't get to make that trip at 130 miles per hour just because you're so cool and all.

So when they changed the laws to say that an as-yet unborn fetus is a human being, does that mean that a fetus is a human when the Eyes of Texas are upon it?

That's the question Brandy Bettone, of Plano, TX, is asking. She got a ticket for driving "alone" in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane on US 75 last week. HOV lanes mean there has to be more than just the driver in the car; it's a fillip to get people to carpool and get fewer cars on certain roads.

So there went Brandy, on the way to pick up her son, and she was pulled over at a checkpoint for being alone. 

"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 the news down there. "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."

The police asked Ms Bettone if there were more people in the car. She is soon to give birth to a daughter, is Ms Bettone, so she said her daughter was in the car  with her.

 "I pointed to my stomach and said, 'My baby girl is right here. She is a person,'" Bettone recounts, but the police wouldn't have it: "He said, 'Oh, no. It's got to be two people outside of the body.'"

She pled her case with several of the cops on the scene. One of them told her to take the citation and plead her case in court, and... 

"One 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," Bettone says. "He was like, 'I don't want to deal with this....Ma'am, it means two persons outside of the body."

She drove off with a $215 ticket. The officer who wrote it told her it would most likely be dropped if she fought it in court. The Dallas County Sheriff Department has had no official comment on the case.

In Texas, the presence of a fetal heartbeat is now the definition of "an unborn human individual," and thereby hangs her case. If we are human at the moment of conception, then a pregnant woman is accompanied by a living human at all times, and, clearly, that satisfies the HOV requirements, so Ms Bettone is innocent.

And my June 30 birthday will now be celebrated on October 30, effective immediately.