In 2019, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg shared his thoughts on late-term abortions. The comments were made as Buttigieg was campaigning to be the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election, which former Vice President Joe Biden would later win.
During a Town Hall with Chris Wallace for Fox News, Buttigieg was asked to clarify his stance on late-term abortion. Late-term abortion, although not a medical term, is “the termination of pregnancy by induced abortion during the late stages of gestation.”
Here is how Pete Buttigieg responded to Wallace’s question:
“I think the dialogue has gotten 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 then attempted to get an even clearer answer from the Mayor, saying, “So just to be clear, you’re saying you’d be okay with a woman, well into the third trimester, deciding to abort her pregnancy?”
Buttigieg went on to call Wallace’s initial question “hypothetical.” He added that those types of questions are only to insight anger and opposition from those who are anti-choice. However, Wallace went on to defend his question, saying that it’s not hypothetical because “6,000 women a year go through third-trimester abortions.”
“That’s right, representing less than 1-percent of pregnancies. 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 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 is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.”
Pete Buttigieg, 2019 Town Hall
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Now, Buttigieg’s answer is going viral again and being praised as an “empathetic” view of late-term abortions, which are normally chastised and criticized as being inhumane. “This response by Pete Buttigieg is just PERFECT!!! Compassionate. Empathetic. Heartful,” one Twitter user wrote. “I can’t wait to see what the future holds for him.”