In an interview this morning on The Breakfast Club radio show, South Bend mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg attempted to rationalize his support for legal abortion until birth by suggesting that perhaps human life begins at the moment of a child’s first breath. Here’s what he said:
[Pro-life people] hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally. Then again, there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath. Even that is something that we can interpret differently. . . . No matter what you think about the cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, ‘I might draw the here. You might draw the line there.’ The most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision. [Emphasis added.]
It’s the latest salvo in a long string of attempts by Buttigieg to paint his entire progressive agenda as the only acceptable set of policies for a moral Christian, insisting that a proper interpretation of Christianity will “point you in a progressive direction.” Time and again, the mayor — who considers himself a faithful Episcopalian — has derided Republicans and conservative Christians for their supposed hypocrisy and immorality, while proclaiming the objective moral correctness of his own policy prescriptions.
But when it comes to abortion, he of the unswerving moral compass thus far has fallen silent, repeatedly demurring on whether it’s ever appropriate to limit abortion legally on moral or religious grounds. That is, until today. Now, Buttigieg apparently has managed to locate “lots of parts” of Scripture that, by his implication, would legitimize a regime of abortion on demand until the moment of birth — or even, I suppose, until a newborn child draws his or her first breath.
Evidently, the mayor has decided that it’s to his advantage to embrace the radical, unpopular position of his party, advocating that a pregnant woman alone should have control over whether the unborn human being inside her is permitted to continue living, even after the point when it is able to survive outside the womb. He should at least have the decency not to twist Scripture in defense of his abhorrent decision, and to cease lecturing us about his superior understanding of Christian morality while he’s at it.