Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, during the left-wing “Breakfast Club” syndicated radio program on Friday, suggested that unborn babies can be aborted up to the point of when they are born, because “there’s a lot of parts of the Bible that talk about how life begins with breath.”

Buttigieg added that “no matter what you think about the kind of cosmic question of how life begins, most Americans can get on board with the idea of, alright, 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.”

Actually, the Bible goes out of its way to point to human life beginning long before a baby’s first breath after birth. For instance, in chapter 44, verse 24 of the Book of Isaiah is found the declaration: “Thus saith the Lord thy redeemer, and thy maker, from the womb: I am the Lord, that make all things, that alone stretch out the heavens, that establish the earth, and there is none with me.”

In Psalm 138, God is thanked because “Thou hast protected me from my mother’s womb.” In the Book of Exodus, chapter 21, verse 22, it states: “If men quarrel, and one strike a woman with child, and she miscarry indeed, but live herself: he shall be answerable for so much damage as the woman’s husband shall require, and as arbiters shall award.” The unborn is referred to as a child, not as something less than a human life.

In the New Testament, in chapter 1 of the Gospel According to Luke, the Virgin Mary visits her cousin, who would give birth to St. John the Baptist, and, per verse 41, “when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the infant leapt in her womb.” Then in verses 42 to 44, Elizabeth “cried out with a loud voice, and said: ‘… For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leapt for joy.’”

Non-persons do not feel emotions such as joy; only people do.

When Life Begins Is Not A Matter Of Opinion

What about science? When does it say human life begins? Keith L. Moore was an anatomy professor at the University of Toronto, associate dean for Basic Medical Sciences in its faculty of Medicine, chair of anatomy from 1976 to 1984, and a founding member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomists. His numerous awards of distinction include the American Medical Writers Association’s First Place Award for medical books in the physicians category for 1993.

In his 1988 book “Essentials of Human Embryology,” professor Moore writes: “Human development begins after the union of male and female gametes or germ cells during a process known as fertilization.” He defines fertilization as “a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being.”

Unlike Buttigieg, this longtime scientific expert on the stages of human life doesn’t call it a “cosmic question” or say “I might draw the line here, you might draw the line there,” nor does he “talk about how life begins with breath.”

Echoing Moore is Van Nostrand’s Scientific Encyclopedia, a staple in medical libraries which the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association described as “outstanding”: “At the moment the sperm cell of the human male meets the ovum of the female and the union results in a fertilized ovum (zygote), a new life has begun …”

So despite Buttigieg’s claims and musings, there is no factual dispute — either in the Bible or within science. Human life begins at conception, not when the lungs first take in oxygen after the baby exits the mother’s uterus.

American law reflects the fact of when life begins. Just last December, for example, in Buttigieg’s own St. Joseph County, of which South Bend is the seat, a 16-year-old male stood before Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Hurley charged with two felonies, one count of murder and one count of feticide, after allegedly stabbing and killing the 17-year-old “who was pregnant with his child,” as the South Bend Tribune put it — again, no cosmic contemplations, or drawing the line here or there, or talking about first breaths in the paper’s reporting.

Maybe what Buttigieg meant to say was: “The most important thing is the person who should be committing feticide is the woman making the decision.”

Unfortunately, we now live in an age when, as a pet food company just discovered and announced happily, “A third of parents say their pet is their favorite child, according to new research. On top of that, using a panel of 2,000 pet owners, results found that 34% of parents prefer their furry friends to their own flesh and blood.”

Of Buttigieg’s comments, Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser remarked, “Just when it seemed that the Democrats’ extremism had hit rock bottom, Pete Buttigieg has taken the party to a new low in justifying abortion on demand and even infanticide through the moment a child takes her first breath. Buttigieg should be ashamed of his inhumane remarks, and no one who holds such extremist views is qualified to lead this nation.”

But when paying more at the grocery for cage-free eggs ranks higher as an act of morality in the nation than protecting human life within the womb, and dogs and cats get love that should be going to children, it indicates that the strictures of both scripture and science have been discarded.

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