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.

“My understanding of my faith should never be imposed on anyone else,” Buttigieg said. This contradicts all the times Buttigieg uses his faith to call for other laws, including minimum wage hikes and gun control. Buttigieg is willing to restrict the right to bear arms because his faith compels him to pursue a “world with no weapons.” So, clearly, he is willing to impose his understanding of his faith on the rest of the country in some cases.

But that wasn’t even the biggest problem with Buttigieg’s answer.

Arnett was unimpressed by the answer. “I wasn’t quite thrilled about his response,” he told me after the event.

“Listen to the Democrats I’ve talked to,” Arnett said. “Not many of them actually are thrilled about abortion.” Arnett calls himself “pro-life from a pro-choice framework. … I don’t like abortion,” he said.

But Arnett, who is undecided among the five leading Democratic contenders, rejects the idea that outlawing abortion will solve the problem. He wants more support for pregnant women, including healthcare and better adoption services that help mothers carry their pregnancy to term.

You can find this view all over Orange City. Jeff Barker, who attends Trinity Reformed Church in Orange City and teaches drama at Northwestern, is a Republican-turned-Democrat. He argued forcefully to me at Town Square Coffeehouse that a more comprehensive safety net is “pro-life.”

These Christian Democrats aren’t merely laying out the well-worn “personally pro-life but pro-choice in policy” argument. They go a step further and seek to “end abortion,” as Arnett put it. They just argue it’s best done through other means beside abortion bans.

Democrats such as Buttigieg could reach socially conservative Christian voters, argues Kathy Winter, chairwoman of the Osceola County Democratic Party, by preaching “kindness, compassion, and caring about all of your friends and neighbors — to the born as well as the unborn too.”

Such a message “could reach a lot of conservative voters here,” Arnett argued. Pro-lifers could come to term with pro-choice Democrats who pursue policies that curb abortion while not banning the procedure. “Saying, ‘Hey, I’m just as committed as you are. Just we have different policies.’”

But no national Democrats push that line. No national Democrat will preach “compassion and caring about … the unborn,” as Winter puts it.. Buttigieg doesn’t want abortion curtailed. In his stump speech, Buttigieg describes abortion as “reproductive healthcare” and refers to legal abortion as a crucial “freedom.”

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.

Buttigieg came to Orange City in the belief that he had something to offer a very Christian town. His faith informs many of his opinions, but, on abortion, his beliefs come from Planned Parenthood.

Editor’s Note: This piece was updated Friday morning to add more comments from attendees at the Orange City event.