Pete Buttigieg, who supports abortion, opposes death penalty because it kills 'defenseless' people

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told The Hill this week that he opposes the death penalty in all scenarios—but his reason for that stance clashes with his defense of abortion.

Buttigieg is so set in his opposition to the death penalty, he said he would even oppose the execution of someone like accused 9/11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"There are people who deserve to die," Buttigieg said. "I just don't know anybody who deserves to kill them."

Buttigieg also said the "moral consequence of killing somebody who is defenseless for any reason goes against certainly what I've been taught about the way we're supposed to treat human life."

The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has made his Christian faith a foundation of his campaign, using it both as a justification for some of his views, and also as a platform on which to criticize other (conservative) Christians like Vice President Mike Pence for theirs.

Abortion is one issue about which he has criticized conservative Christians. Buttigieg believes Republicans are wrong to use Christian values as a reason to oppose abortion.

"Right now, they hold everybody in line with this one piece of doctrine about abortion, which is obviously a tough issue for a lot of people to think through morally," Buttigieg told The Breakfast Club during a September interview. "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."

Yet, there is an obvious contradiction in Buttigieg's views on life. How can he believe the execution of a mass murderer is the immoral killing of a defenseless human, while supporting the mass killing of unborn babies as a fundamental right for all women?

Additionally, Buttigieg's wider view that there are no people who deserve to kill even those people who deserve to be killed comes with some larger potential implications for how he might view military conflict if he was to become commander-in-chief. As a Navy veteran, Buttigieg spent some time in Afghanistan, although he did not engage in direct combat.

(H/T Hot Air)