After being pressed Sunday night by Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, Pete Buttigieg told the host he believes there should be no limit on abortion, arguing he thinks it’s best to allow those obtaining abortions “to draw the line” on when it’s acceptable.
Wallace asked the 2020 Democratic presidential contender about his views on whether abortion should be outlawed at any stage during pregnancy just days after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed into law the most stringently pro-life legislation in the country. The bill, which makes no exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape, criminalizes the physicians who perform abortions.
Additionally, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) recently signed a law banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detectable, which usually occurs around six weeks into pregnancy.
Buttigieg just deflected from actually answering the question by saying he “trusts” women to make decisions about if and when they should be legally permitted to terminate their pregnancies.
“You know,” he told Wallace, “I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on when 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,” he added.
Wallace followed up on Buttigieg’s answer, asking the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, if he supports legal abortion “well into the third trimester,” noting there are approximately 6,000 such terminations each year in the U.S.
The Democratic candidate once again deflected from giving the Fox News anchor a straight answer, telling Wallace mothers who choose late-term abortion are likely “expecting to carry it to term,” but for some reason, are faced with making the “impossible, unthinkable choice” to terminate their pregnancies.
“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 isn’t going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made,” he argued.
Buttigieg, who has made much of his Episcopalian faith, faced a similar line of questioning in April from MSNBC host Willie Geist, who asked the 37-year-old politician how he balances his Christian faith and his support of late-term abortion.
Again, he didn’t really answer the question. Buttigieg, at the time, told Geist those in the pro-life movement are asking “misleading questions” because, in his view, the morality of abortion is “unknowable.” He then claimed, as he did on Fox News, that the women who choose to terminate their pregnancies well into term are doing so for health reasons.