Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has defended killing babies in late-term abortions. He believes that it’s alright to end the life of a baby at or after viability because only 12,000 such babies are killed in late-term abortions each and every year.
Buttigieg made the claim in a new interview with the New York Times:
“The fact is that less than 1 percent of abortions take place after 24 weeks of pregnancy,” South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg said. “They often involve heartbreaking circumstances in which a person’s health or life is at risk, or when the fetus has a congenital condition that is incompatible with life.”
It’s accurate to say that just 1.3% of abortions are done to kill babies who at or after the point of viability. According to the most recently available 2014 data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, however, that still comes to just over 12,000 abortions a year.
Yet, the former South bend mayor is incorrect when it comes to why late-term abortions are done. Most post-viability abortions are not done for only medical emergencies or “heartbreaking” reasons. Even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute cited a study from 2013 that found “most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
That late-term abortions are medically necessary has been a lie that has been perpetuated for decades.
Ron Fitzsimmons, the former executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, made a startling admission about late-term abortions as well in 1997. He told the New York Times that he had lied to U.S. Congress when he said late-term abortions are rare. Fitzsimmons said late-term abortions are more common than abortion activists admit, and many are on healthy mothers carrying healthy unborn babies.
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And late-term abortionist Martin Haskell, who is credited with inventing the partial-birth abortion procedure, said in a 1993 interview with American Medical News: “I’ll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range…. In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective.”
And New York Magazine featured the story of an Oregon woman who aborted her unborn baby at 28 weeks of pregnancy even though they both were healthy.
Numerous OB-GYNs have pointed out that late-term abortions are not necessary to save women’s lives. In cases where the mother’s life is at risk, doctors induce labor or perform a cesarean section, and it is not necessary to kill the baby before doing so.
Dr. Lawrence Koning, an OB-GYN in Corona, California, previously explained the situation to Christian News Network.
“As an OB/GYN physician for 31 years, there is no medical situation that requires aborting/killing the baby in the third trimester to ‘save the mother’s life,’” Koning said in 2016. “Just deliver the baby by C-section and the baby has 95+% survival with readily available NICU care even at 28 weeks. C-section is quicker and safer than partial birth abortion for the mother.”
Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, also said abortion is not necessary to save lives.
Koop, a pediatric surgeon, said: “When a woman is pregnant, her obstetrician takes on the care of two patients—the mother-to-be and the unborn baby. If, toward the end of the pregnancy complications arise that threaten the mother’s health, he will take the child by inducing labor or performing a Caesarian section. His intention is still to save the life of both the mother and the baby. The baby will be premature. The baby is never willfully destroyed because the mother’s life is in danger.”
This is not the first time Buttigieg has defended abortions up to birth. He previously said killing a baby up to birth was a “personal decision ” for women to make. But no one has the right to make a decision taking the life of another human being and the Constitution requires the government to give a person due process before it takes a human life.
