By Matt Hadro
Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2020 / 12:00 pm
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 which 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."
