On October 12 2020, actor and social media heavy George Takei shared a purported screenshot of a response by Pete Buttigieg to Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on the subject of third-trimester or “late-term” abortions:
Takei’s post did not include commentary, just a screenshot reading:
Pete Buttigieg with the only acceptable answer RE: “late term abortions:”
Buttigieg: I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on where 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 when it’s their own health.
Chris Wallace: So just to be clear, you’re saying that you would be okay with a woman, well into the third trimester, deciding to abort her pregnancy.
Buttigieg: Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional—
Wallace: It’s not hypothetical, there are 6,000 women a year who get abortions in the third trimester.
Buttigieg: That’s right, representing less than 1 percent of cases. So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it’s that late in your pregnancy, then it’s almost by definition, you’ve been expecting to carry it to term. We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib, families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice. And 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 is not going to be made any better, medically or morally, because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Takei’s post did not include information about when the purported remarks were made, nor did he offer when the exchange might have taken place.
First, we found the origin of the screenshot, which was an image version of a June 6 2019 Facebook post from author and commentator Malcolm Nance. We then located a May 19 2019 tweet with video, during which the remarks were presented in a slightly longer context:
A chyron indicated the segment aired on Fox News, during a Town Hall with Buttigieg. The clip was 55 seconds long; part of Buttigieg’s transcribed remarks were in the segment’s final few seconds.
Before Buttigieg began to address Wallace’s remarks, Wallace asked:
… do you believe at any point in pregnancy … that there should be any limit on a woman’s right to have an abortion?”
In the clip, Buttigieg responded:
I think the dialogue has gotten so caught up on where 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 when it’s their own health.
We also found a May 19 2019 video uploaded to Fox News’ YouTube channel (“Town Hall with Pete Buttigieg | Part 1”), and there, Buttigieg’s “I trust women to draw the line when it’s their own health” remarks can be found just before the 10:40 mark.
At 10:44, Wallace responded:
So just to be clear, you’re saying that you would be okay with a woman, well into the third trimester, deciding to abort her pregnancy.
Around 10:50, Wallace and Buttigieg engaged in some crosstalk, leading to the following exchange:
Buttigieg: Look, these hypotheticals are usually set up in order to provoke a strong emotional—
Wallace: It’s not hypothetical, there are 6,000 women a year who get abortions in the third trimester.
Buttigieg: That’s right, representing less than 1 percent of cases. So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a woman in that situation. If it’s that late in your pregnancy, then it’s almost by definition, you’ve been expecting to carry it to term. We’re talking about women who have perhaps chosen a name. Women who have purchased a crib, families that then get the most devastating medical news of their lifetime, something about the health or the life of the mother that forces them to make an impossible, unthinkable choice, and 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 is not going to be made any better — medically or morally — because the government is dictating how that decision should be made.
Wallace then segued to the topic of addiction after the audience applauded Buttigieg’s remarks. Buttigieg’s statement — that only 6,000 instances or roughly one percent of all abortions annually are “late term” — was supported by a March 2019 Guardian article headlined, “The truth about late-term abortions in the US: they’re very rare”:
Late-term abortions are particularly controversial. Especially when the inflammatory language deployed by the Donald Trump in his State of the Union address claims that Democrats want to make legislative changes would “allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments from birth”.
But late-term abortions are also very rare. In 2015, more than 400,000 abortions took place in the US. Of those, just 5,597 (or 1.3%) happened on or after 21 weeks of pregnancy, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The vast majority (91%) of abortions take place at or before 13 weeks of pregnancy.
Takei’s transcription screenshot of Buttigieg’s response on third trimester or “late term abortions” was wildly popular, shared thousands of times in just a few minutes. Those remarks were accurately described, and they appeared in a May 2019 “town hall” on Fox News between Buttigieg and Wallace.