Buttigieg doesn’t speak like someone who believes abortion is even bad, let alone a necessary evil. No national Democrat can believe such a thing; that would entail believing that Planned Parenthood, which performs hundreds of thousands of abortions per year and also spends tens of millions of dollars to elect Democrats, is engaged in evil.

ORANGE CITY, Iowa — Pete Buttigieg came to a Christian, conservative town in Iowa and talked about his faith and values. Then he got a question on abortion, and he face-planted.

There are, in theory, good answers that pro-choice Democrats can give to pro-life Christian voters. But none of the Democratic presidential candidates seem versed in them. Buttigieg, the former South Bend mayor who regularly trumpets his faith, seems especially incompetent in this regard. In Orange City, he repeatedly invoked biblical passages about feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger as part of his case for more food stamp spending and more refugee admissions.

On abortion, though, Buttigieg seemed to make the exact opposite argument about policy and faith.

Caleb Arnett is a sophomore at Northwest College, a Christian college in Orange City. Orange City is called one the “Jerusalems of the Reformed Church in America.” The town blares its Dutch roots loudly, and the Christian Reformed Church and the Reformed Church of America, both of which trace their origins back to 19th-century Dutch immigrants to America, dominate the town along with closely related churches with large and dynamic congregations.

Arnett, a Democrat, asked, “How does your faith inform your views on abortion?”

Buttigieg responded by pointing to biblical passages that suggest life doesn’t begin until birth. His argument was that the Bible is ambiguous on the morality of abortion. It’s a clever argument, but it doesn’t really hold water in conservative, Christian places such as Orange City.

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