Georgia is making sure unborn babies get treated as valuable human beings in all areas of the law, from banning abortions to including them in census data to recognizing them as second passengers in vehicles on the road.
WABE reports the Georgia Department of Public Safety recently changed the description of its high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane requirements to allow pregnant mothers to use them. The lanes are reserved for vehicles with two or more passengers.
The change is the result of the state heartbeat law, which recently went into effect. The pro-life law protects unborn babies by banning abortions once their heartbeat is detectable, about six weeks of pregnancy, and recognizes babies in the womb as “natural persons.”
As a result, pregnant mothers may collect child support before their baby is born, parents may claim their unborn baby as a dependent on their taxes and census data will begin including babies in the womb.
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Unborn babies also are recognized as second passengers in vehicles. Here’s more from WABE:
The official Georgia Department of Public Safety requirements on HOV lane usage used to say “vehicles with two or more (living and not pre-infant) persons” are allowed to ride in them.
After a federal appeals court ruled on July 20, that Georgia’s restrictive abortion law can go into effect, it took DPS some time to remove the phrase “living and not pre-infant” from the requirements.
A spokesman for DPS confirmed that pregnant people can now use the lanes, and no documents are needed to prove the pregnancy.
Earlier this summer, a Houston, Texas mother made national headlines after she fought a traffic violation for using the HOV lane while just she and her unborn baby were in the vehicle. She said her unborn daughter was a second person, pointing to new Texas pro-life laws that recognize babies in the womb as valuable human beings.
The legal situation in Texas is a bit different. According to Fortune, the Texas penal code recognizes babies in the womb as people, but the state transportation code does not. It is an inconsistency that state lawmakers plan to address in the upcoming legislative session, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Currently, Texas, Georgia and 12 other states are enforcing laws that protect unborn babies by banning abortions. According to SBA Pro-Life America, their laws are saving approximately 139,000 unborn babies from abortion. Additional states could protect unborn babies soon, pending legal battles.
For nearly 50 years under Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court forced states to legalize abortions for any reason up to viability and allowed states to legalize abortions without restriction through all nine months. As a result, more than 63 million unborn babies’ rights and lives were destroyed in abortions.
In June, the Supreme Court reversed Roe in the historic Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case. Now states may protect unborn babies’ rights again.
