On Thursday, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg held a town hall in Henniker, New Hampshire. During the event, a 7-year-old girl asked the South Bend mayor a question about abortion.
“Mayor Buttigieg, I have listened to you in the debates, and learned some stuff about you, and that you believe in a woman’s right to choose about her own body,” the girl said. “I agree with that. No one should mess with or choose about my body except me and my parents because I’m still a child.”
Buttigieg interjected: “You sound pretty sophisticated for a child. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?”
The girl said that she didn’t mind, and told the mayor that she was 7. Buttigieg replied: “Really? Well, you’re ahead of your time.”
The girl continued, asking: “I believe that you make your decision on whether you’re going to have a child, and then your decision is made, and the abortion is not part of it. What do you think about that?”
Buttigieg responded to the little girl, saying:
Well, first of all, thanks for speaking up about this, and thanks for being here, and I wish I was as tuned in to big issues when I was 7 as you seem to be. This is a hard issue for a lot of people because they believe different things – and where I live, people believe different things, including people that I respect. But the way I think about it is that this choice, it’s about drawing a line, and we might each, following our own beliefs, have a different idea about where to draw the line.
What I hope everybody, or at least most of us, can agree on is who gets to draw the line – and that’s the person making the decision, that’s the woman in question. And I trust women to make that choice. I don’t think that choice is easy. I know that it’s not going to be any better because the government’s saying what it ought to be. I trust women to make that choice. And it sounds like you and I view this issue the same way.
WATCH:
Pete Buttigieg is no moderate.
He just told a 7-year-old pro-life girl it’s okay to kill babies in abortions.https://t.co/KYgPd7NJgV pic.twitter.com/1W6IRTHp45
— LifeNews.com (@LifeNewsHQ) December 5, 2019
Buttigieg has made his position on abortion clear on numerous occasions, using similar verbiage. The extremity of his position can be seen during a Fox News town hall in which Chris Wallace asked the mayor about third trimester abortions.
“Do you believe at any point in pregnancy, whether it’s six weeks or eight weeks or 24 weeks or whatever, that there should be any limit on a woman’s right to have an abortion?” Wallace asked.
Buttigieg answered in typical fashion, saying: “I think the dialogue has got so caught up on where you draw the line that we’ve gotten away from the fundamental question of who gets to draw the line, and I trust women to draw the line when it’s [their own life].”
Wallace followed up, asking: “You’re saying that you would be okay with a woman well into the third trimester deciding to abort a pregnancy?”
Buttigieg pushed back, taking issue with the “hypothetical” nature of the question. Wallace then stated that at least 6,000 abortions a year are performed in the third trimester, and it’s therefore not hypothetical.
Buttigieg was finally forced to answer Wallace’s query:
So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it’s that late in your pregnancy, that means, almost by definition, you’ve been expecting to carry it to term. We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name; women who have purchased a crib; families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime – something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice.
And the bottom line is, as horrible as that choice is – that woman, that family may seek spiritual guidance; they may seek medical guidance – but that decision’s not going to be made any better medically or morally because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino said during an interview with Lila Rose, founder of anti-abortion organization Live Action, late-term abortions are never medically necessary to save the life of the mother.
ROSE: One of the biggest arguments of pro-abortion activists is that abortion is medically necessary. What’s your position on that?
LEVATINO: We hear all the time how abortion – including, especially late-term abortion – is necessary to save women’s lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. I spent nine years working at a tertiary medical center. I mean, there are only certain hospitals in the country that are designated to take care of the really, really high risk pregnancies…
I was faculty at the [Albany Medical Center] hospital for nine years, and I saw hundreds of cases of really severe pregnancy complications – cancers, heart disease, intractable diabetes, out of control, toxemia pregnancy, out of control, and I saved … in those nine years, I saved hundreds of women from life-threatening pregnancies, and I did that by delivering them, by ending their pregnancy by delivery, either induction of labor or caesarean section…
And I always tell people – in all of those years, the number of babies that I was obligated to deliberately kill in the process was zero. None.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) maintains that late-term abortion may be necessary “when complications severely compromise a woman’s health or life,” including “premature rupture of membranes and infection, preeclampsia, placental abruption, and placenta accreta. Women in these circumstances may risk extensive blood loss, stroke, and septic shock that could lead to maternal death.”
While Mayor Pete Buttigieg stands in line with many of his Democratic presidential peers on the issue of abortion, he is wildly out of step with the American people.
A 2018 Gallup survey asked respondents whether they believed abortion should be legal or illegal “in the last three months of pregnancy.” 81% said that it should be “illegal.” 65% stated that abortion should be illegal even in the second trimester.
In 2019, Gallup asked respondents if they believed abortion was morally wrong or morally acceptable, “regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal.” 50% said it’s “morally wrong,” while 42% said it’s “morally acceptable.”
This article has been expanded to include ACOG’s statement on late-term abortion.