OPINION:
In September 2019, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, raised the eyebrows of more than 20 million of our nation’s Democrats who define themselves as pro-life.
In an interview on CBS’ “Breakfast Club,” the good mayor suggested that not only is a full-term baby girl, who is in the process of exiting her mother’s birth canal, not yet a human being, but neither is that same child post-birth, when she is held in the doctor’s hands.
No, a beating heart, the sensations of pain and pleasure, and the ability to move her legs, arms, fingers and toes do not grant this infant personhood, dignity and the right to life.
None of these things matter, says Mayor Pete. A baby is not human, nor does it warrant any legal protection, until after it takes its first breath. In his attempts to defend what appeared to be boldfaced support of killing children, not only while they are being born, but even afterward, here is what Mr. Buttigieg said:
“[Pro-life people] hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion … But [t]here are a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath … [When it comes to] the cosmic question of how life begins … I might draw here, you might draw the line there, [But] the most important thing is the person who should be drawing the line is the woman making the decision.”
This past week, Meghan McCain, of “The View,” gave Mr. Buttigieg a chance to clarify and presumably back away from his comments.
Telling Mr. Buttigieg that it appeared that he was not only embracing terminating pre-born children for any reason at any time but that he also seemed to be arguing to legalize infanticide, Ms. McCain proceeded with the following exchange:
McCain: I think the interpretation from pro-life people like me was that you meant [it was morally okay to abort] a baby actually being born … I just wanted you to clarify because I found that statement to be pretty radical.
Buttigieg: I’m just pointing to the fact that different people will interpret their own moral lights, and for that matter, interpret Scripture differently. But we live in a country where it is extremely important that no one person should have to be subject to some other person’s interpretation of their own religion …
McCain: I think people, even Democrats — and there are a lot of pro-life Democrats in the country — want to know exactly where your line is …
Buttigieg: My point is that it shouldn’t be up to the government to draw the line. It should be up to the woman who is confronted with that choice. McCain: So if a woman wanted to invoke infanticide after a baby is born, you’d be comfortable with that?
Buttigieg: If this is a late-term situation, then by definition, it’s one where a woman was expecting to carry the pregnancy to term. Then she gets the most perhaps devastating news of her life. We’re talking about families that may have picked out a name, maybe assembling a crib, and they learn something excruciating and are faced with this terrible choice. And I don’t know what to tell them morally about what they should do. I just know that I trust that her decision isn’t going to be any better, medically or morally … [if] the government is telling her to do it a certain way.
So, there you have it. The man who has finished first or second in the first two Democratic primaries refuses to condemn killing a baby, not only at the moment it is exiting the birth canal but even afterward.
By Mr. Buttigieg’s standards, a baby girl or boy who is wiggling and warm and in the doctor’s hands, but who hasn’t yet drawn the first breath, can be crushed and dismembered or just left to die cold and alone in a stainless steel surgical pan.
Physicians used to slap a newborn to get it to breathe, but in Mayor Pete’s world, today’s doctors can, and should, leave a child to suffocate simply because something about it is unpleasing to the mother.
Under a President Buttigieg, all of us better hope we never need a ventilator to assist our intake of oxygen. Because apparently, if you’re not breathing (on your own?), you’re not human. You’re just an inconvenient tragedy, and the government has no right or responsibility to tell a discomforted family member or your doctor not to let you die.
Welcome to Mayor Pete’s brave new world where man, not God, defines what is human and what is not.
And this precocious man-child of a politician has the impudence to use “Christianity” to justify this human sacrifice.
Debased ideas come from a debased mind.
This man is evil in so many ways.
• Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).
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