Democratic Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband, activist and writer Chasten Glezman Buttigieg, recently became parents to twins this past week.
Predictably, Evangelical "pro-life" Christians are outraged.
After Buttigieg shared a photo of he and Chasten with their new children, Penelope Rose and Joseph August, far-right Evangelical Christians sent a wave of anger toward the couple.
And given many of them are also prominent self-proclaimed "pro-life" activists—a movement which often pushes adoption on women with unwanted pregnancies—the hypocrisy their responses laid bare left many on social media calling out their hypocrisy.
Take, for example, anti-choice activist Lila Rose, founder of pro-birth charity Live Action, who sent a grief-stricken tweet, seen below, to Buttigieg in response to his announcement of the twins' birth.
Including a tearful emoji for effect, Rose tweeted:
"Where are the mothers? My heart goes out to these infants."
Despite Rose's advocacy for forced births, she appears to know little about pregnancy and childbirth.
Asking about the twins' mothers?
One assumes the mother—singular because that's how twins work—was resting after giving birth to babies she chose to give up for adoption.
That's how choice works.
The anti-choice, pro-birth contingent is so outraged the Buttigiegs' announcement even made waves overseas. In a since deleted tweet, La Manif Pour Tous (LMPT), one of France's largest organizations fighting against women's reproductive freedom and body autonomy, same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples, even went so far as to claim the Buttigieg's had stolen their babies from the mother.
Quote-tweeting the Buttigieg's photo, LMPT's tweet read:
"How can you not be scandalized by this photo?"
"Not content to have stolen the babies from the mother just after childbirth, these two men also took her place in the hospital bed…"
"Think about these children who have been robbed of their mother forever."
At least LMPT knew twins only have a single birth mother.
The Buttigiegs' babies were legally adopted. "Stealing babies from the mother just after childbirth" is, of course, not at all how adoption works, as @ParisPasRose, the Twitter user who shared the screenshot of LMPT's tweet, pointed out.
In fact, it is now an option for the birth mother to choose the parents her baby will be adopted by from a list of potential parents.
But details like that seem not to matter to anti-choice activists like Missouri Republican politician Saundra McDowell, who accused the Buttigieg's of becoming parents simply for the publicity.
If this hypocrisy has you scratching your head, you're not alone.
Scores of people on Twitter were confused by conservatives hating children being carried to term then given a loving home.
Here's hoping Penelope and Joseph can grow up in a kinder, more empathetic world.
u/Duskymoonlight/Reddit
u/Duskymoonlight/Reddit