(LifeSiteNews) — Far-left California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom recently opened up about the trauma he experienced from his mother’s assisted suicide, but it did not change his support for legalization of the practice.
On February 4, the Washington Post published an interview with Newsom. It begins by recounting how, in spring 2002, Tessa Newsom, who was dying of breast cancer, called her son to inform him she planned to have herself euthanized the following Thursday. Newsom recalls how he and his sister Hilary sat with her in her last moments, a trying experience detailed more fully in his upcoming memoir.
“I hated her for it – to be there for the last breath – for years,” Newsom told the Post. “I want to say it was a beautiful experience. It was horrible.” After she died, Newsom recalls sitting with her “for another 20 minutes […] My head on her stomach, just crying, waiting for another breath.”
Despite the traumatic experience, however, Newsom maintains “she would have just suffered” had his mother not gone through with it, even calling the doctor who administered the lethal drugs “courageous.” Physician-assisted suicide has been legal in California since 2015, and Newsom signed a law making approval quicker and easier in 2019. He also favors nationwide legalization.
The position Newsom stakes out on euthanasia – personally conflicted on an emotional level, while ultimately supportive – follows the same pattern the potential 2028 presidential candidate has displayed on transgender issues such as youth “reassignment” surgery and males in female sports. In multiple issues he has made a point of expressing sympathy for conservative and mainstream objections to both, but those objections have not affected the actual policies he supports.
In America, asssisted suicide is currently legal in 12 states plus the District of Columbia, with legalization measures pending in an additional 13.
As Patients Rights Action Fund (PRAF) executive director Matt Vallière has said, current euthanasia programs in the United States constitute discrimination against patients with life-threatening conditions in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as when a state will “will pay for every instance of assisted suicide” but not palliative care, “I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics.”
Live Action’s Bridget Sielicki further notes that “because a paralytic is involved, a person can look peaceful, while they actually drown to death in their own bodily secretions. Experimental assisted suicide drugs have led to the ‘burning of patients’ mouths and throats, causing some to scream in pain.’ Furthermore, a study in the medical journal Anaesthesia found that a third of patients took up to 30 hours to die after ingesting assisted suicide drugs, while four percent took seven days to die.”
Support is available to talk to those struggling with thoughts of ending their lives. The Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988.