“Pete Buttigieg claims Bible says babies can be aborted ‘up to their first breath.’”

We’ve previously debunked claims that New York laws make it “perfectly legal to murder” a baby a minute before it would be born. A Sept. 6 post on LifeNews.com strikes a similar note with a story bearing this headline about a Democratic presidential candidate: “Pete Buttigieg claims Bible says babies can be aborted up to their first breath.”

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The LifeNews.com story, which originated on The Daily Caller under a different headline, cites a Sept. 6 interview Buttigieg did on “The Breakfast Club,” a syndicated radio show out of New York. The story links to a video of the interview, starting about 35 minutes into the 48-minute conversation. Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Ind., talks about how the current Republican Party conflicts with Christian values like helping those in need, and how there will be “a reckoning” over it. Then he says: 

“Right now they hold everyone one in line with this one kinda piece of doctrine about abortion, right, 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, and so even that is something that we can interpret differently.”

The host interjects and says, “I’m pro-choice.”

Buttigieg replies, “Me too. But I think no matter where you think about the kind of cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on the board with the idea, of I might draw the line 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.”

The story includes this context but the headline overreaches by saying “Pete Buttigieg claims Bible says babies can be aborted ‘up to their first breath.’”

We rate this headline False.