I imagine Baytown GOP House Rep. Briscoe Cain struggles a lot in his daily life, just with the routine challenges that come with being a miserable little yeehaw fucko, but I would love to hear how he came to file HB 521, a bill that would enable pregnant people, as the sole occupants of their vehicles, to use the HOV lane.

On the one hand: As a Republican and especially as a Baytown Republican who lives to serve the kings of oil and gas, Cain has a sworn duty to fuck the environment 50 ways from Sunday at every opportunity, so he surely can’t be happy supporting HOV lanes, which are for liberal snowflakes who hate Jesus so much that they are willing to do just one bare-minimum thing which makes their lives slightly easier and has the side benefit of potentially slowing the deterioration of earth into a fiery inferno? 

But on the other hand, teh baybeeeez!??!?!

It’s gotta be a real dilemma for a dude already faced with picking out which big-boy hat he’s going to wear today.

The question of fetuses in HOV lanes, while not new, made news this summer when a Plano, TX woman contested a ticket claiming she had a right to drive in the multi-occupant lane. When the Dallas Morning News asked a state anti-abortion group for comment, they noted that the Texas Transportation Code does not explicitly consider a fetus a person (they believe the penal code does). Cain’s bill would amend the transportation code thusly:

Sec. 545.429.  USE OF HIGH OCCUPANCY VEHICLE LANE BY PREGNANT OPERATOR. An operator of a motor vehicle who is pregnant is entitled to use any high occupancy vehicle lane in this state regardless of whether the vehicle is occupied by a passenger other than the operator's unborn child.

I don’t know the extent to which this, if passed, is likely to shore up attempts to secure full fetal personhood in Texas or elsewhere, but I assume it’s what Cain has in mind. (I would also love to know how badly it pained Cain, or whatever lackey penned this thing, to use gender-neutral language in its construction. Shout out to all the ~ pregnant operators ~ out there.)