Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg emphasized this week his position that abortion should be legally permitted at any point in a pregnancy.
Placing any limits on abortion “should be up to the woman who’s confronted with the choice,” rather than to lawmakers, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana said on ABC’s “The View” Feb. 6.
Woman seek late-term abortions because of “devastating” fetal diagnoses, Buttigieg said, and thus government should not be making decisions for the mother.
“I don’t know what to tell them [mothers], morally, about what they should do,” he said. “I just know that I trust her, and her decision, medically or morally, isn’t going to be any better because the government is commanding her to do it.”
But it is not clear that late-term abortions are mostly sought when a child has a difficult medical diagnosis.
“Data suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment,” the Guttmacher Institute reported in 2013.
The View’s co-host Meghan McCain asked Buttigieg if he supports policies that would deprive medical care to a child who survives a botched abortion, which she called “infanticide after a baby was born.”
“Does anybody seriously think that’s what these cases are about?” Buttigieg retorted, suggesting that there are not actually cases in children survive botched abortions.
The federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that, from 2003-2014, there were 143 “infant deaths” that involved abortion, and “it is possible” the number is higher.
Buttigieg narrowly, and unofficially, won Monday’s Iowa caucus with 100% of precincts reporting and a lead of just more than two state delegate equivalents. DNC chair Tom Perez has ordered a “recanvass” to review the results, which were delayed by widespread technical difficulties in reporting the caucus results from precincts all over the state.
The candidate, who is civilly married to a man, has frequently mentioned his Christian faith during the campaign, and did so again on Thursday.
“We all come at faith in a different way,” he said.
“I want to remind people you don’t have to vote a certain way because of your faith,” he said in response to an Iowa woman apparently wanting to withdraw her vote for him after learning he has a same-sex partner.
Buttigieg quoted Scripture, saying that “if your faith guides you, I think in a time like this, what about ‘I was hungry and you fed me.’ What about ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’ What about seeking leaders who walk in the way of humility and decency, does your faith have anything to say about that?”
In a September interview on the radio show “Breakfast Club,” Buttigieg cited the Bible to make his case for legal abortion.
He noted “a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins at breath” and then argued that, because of a variety of interpretations of what the Bible says about when life begins, no one should use their biblical views to limit a woman’s ability to have an abortion.
Republicans, he said, keep faith voters “in line with this one kind of piece of doctrine about abortion.”
When asked by McCain about that interview on Thursday, Buttigieg re-emphasized that “no one person have to be subject to some other person’s interpretation of their own religion,” and that abortion “should be up to the woman who’s confronted with the choice.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
“What about seeking leaders who walk in the way of humility and decency, does your faith have anything to say about that?”
**********
My Bible references many flawed characters who were used by God to accomplish His Will. I’m much more concerned with their fruits than their failures.
And as far as “walking in humility and decency” which candidate might that refer to? Surely not one promoting feticide & virtual infanticide. If a candidate can check off endorsing two of the four sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance, that might give him pause to reflect rather than preach to his constituents.
Does anyone know a practicing homosexual who is against contraception and abortion and who doesn’t determinedly defend both? They may exist but quite rare. The reason. Deviation from the divinely ordained conjugal act between Man and Woman is inherently if not completely consciously a lethally generated inclination. The act of love between Man and Woman by its nature intended to generate Life if violated is in effect a negation of life. The ordination by God of human sexuality motivated by mutual heterosexual love is sacred to God and vital to a culture. Otherwise we fall into the pattern of a culture of death indicated with the rise of abortion, euthanasia, suicide, all forms of violent and distorted sex in conjunction with the historically situated [in the West]emergence of homosexuality as a good rather than a profound evil. Our future is literally within the intellectual and spiritual means Christ has given us.
The overblown ex-mayor of diminutive South Bend illustrates the ethical grasp of lemmings on the run, and of a brainwashed generation or two of youth including much of his age group. His own inability to detect even elementary violations of the principle of non-contradiction is illustrated by a recent event in bellwether Seattle. Picture Alfred E. Newman as an eighth grader…
First, at the Seattle Museum of History and Industry one finds an enlarged press release for the State of Washington in 1970 when it became the first state (or any population in human history!) to approve abortion by popular vote (the dominance of “Referendum 20” over the “Voice for the Unborn”).
And second, for postured media balance, and immediately to the right, is a second display. This one reports that in 1994 the firm Advanced Technology Life (ATL, also Washington state!) became the manufacturer of ultrasound developed at the University of Washington. The text reports that this invention has “saved countless lives,” and an ultrasound image (sonogram) of a real child in the womb is depicted.
A group of abortion-exempt middle school students imbibe without question the first display, and then pause (between smartphone tweets) at the second display, before hurrying along without perceiving any contradiction at all: “That’s cool, really neat.” Off now to the fast-food counter and future entitlements.
The Bible-shredding, unemployed ex-mayor’s tilt toward dismembering late-term abortions (also the “sacred ground” of rip-it-up Pelosi), and for infanticide, fits right in. A brainstem-wannabe leader from the self-appointed “intellectual class” posing as a middle-of-the crowd centrist.