By Daniel Payne
CNA Staff, Aug 22, 2025 /
14:08 pm
Years-old video that surfaced this week showed Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger endorsing assisted suicide and appearing to suggest that even religious hospitals should be required to perform the procedure.
The footage, which shows then-U.S. House candidate Spanberger at a 2018 campaign event, depicts the Democrat being asked about her position on “legislation that would legalize medical aid in dying,” a common euphemism for assisted suicide.
Yikes. In one video, Spanberger endorses assisted suicide and violating the religious beliefs of Catholic hospitals. Clearest, non-word salad answer I’ve ever heard her give. Must be important to her. https://t.co/CmiV3Kvh0I
— Glen Sturtevant (@GlenSturtevant) August 13, 2025
“I support and I would support legislation that legalizes the right to die with dignity of a person’s choosing,” Spanberger responded. “That would include allowing for medical providers to provide prescriptions for life-ending prescriptions.”
Spanberger at the same time was asked to speak on “permitting religious health care institutions to dictate what their physicians are allowed to discuss with their patients.”
“I oppose the ability of religious institutions to put their religious-based ideas on individuals and their health care choices and options,” she responded in the video.
“I believe that we should trust people to have relationships with their health care providers that lead them to make strong decisions based on their medical practices, and I do not believe that people should have the option to allow their own personal beliefs to dictate the type of medical care that they are providing their patients,” she said.
The Democrat is running against current state Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears.
Spanberger’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday morning asking if she still supports assisted suicide or forcing individuals and hospitals to perform it.
The resurfaced video generated backlash online this week. Republican State Del. Geary Higgins wrote that Spanberger’s remarks were “absolutely unbelievable.”
“Not only will religious organizations that do not believe in assisted suicide have to talk about it, they will have to make it available,” he said.
The National Right to Life Committee, meanwhile, described the Democrat’s position as “a window into how far some are willing to go to prioritize ideological consistency over constitutional rights.”
“Voters and lawmakers should take her at her word and reject the premise that the state may dictate the moral framework of faith-based institutions,” group outreach director Raimundo Rojas said.
State lawmakers in Virginia last year voted down an effort to legalize assisted suicide there. Nearly a dozen states and the District of Columbia presently allow the practice.
Ahead of the Virginia bill’s defeat in the state Legislature last year, Virginia’s Catholic bishops warned that the proposal would “[make] the most vulnerable even more vulnerable” and put them at risk of “deadly harm.”
Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington and Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond called the bill a “lethal measure” and reminded voters that human life “is sacred and must never be abandoned or discarded.”
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Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.
