Physician-Assisted Suicide Is Incompatible With A Doctor’s Oath

Editor’s note: The following commentary is an excerpt from remarks presented before the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission on March 16, 2026.

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I am a full-time hospice physician in California, board-certified in family medicine with additional certification in hospice and palliative care. For me, medicine is more than a profession — it is a calling. Guided by my faith, I strive to treat every patient with compassion, dignity, and respect.

As a hospice physician, I care for patients who are often frightened, vulnerable, and nearing the end of life. My role is to relieve suffering and help patients live their final days with dignity — not to hasten death.

In 2022, California amended its assisted suicide law to require even non-participating physicians to acknowledge and document a patient’s request for assisted suicide — effectively initiating the process for obtaining lethal drugs. Even physicians who objected to assisted suicide had to record the request, provide information about it, and refer the patient to a physician who would provide it.

This was no accident. Legislative analysis before the law was passed warned that forcing physicians to document or facilitate assisted suicide was problematic and likely violated their rights, yet the state pushed the law forward anyway.

At the same time, the waiting period to obtain lethal drugs was drastically shortened — from 15 days to just 48 hours after the first documented request.

Forty-eight hours leave very little time for reflection — and often not enough time to treat the symptoms that lead many patients to request assisted suicide in the first place.

In more than 20 years as a hospice physician, I have seen how vulnerable patients are when facing terminal illness. They are often physically exhausted, emotionally overwhelmed, and fearful of becoming a burden to those they love.

Many patients arrive in hospice with severe, poorly controlled pain — especially those with advanced cancer. Some have already obtained assisted-suicide drugs. Others are considering it because they fear their suffering will become unbearable. But with proper hospice care, we can often control those symptoms within days. When pain and distress are relieved, fear fades, hope returns, and the desire for assisted suicide often disappears.

Legalizing assisted suicide has also created situations where vulnerable patients can be pressured toward it — even when it is not their true wish.

In one case, a family member asked me to encourage their mother to consider assisted suicide. She was a deeply religious woman who believed suicide was wrong, but her family hoped she might reconsider if a doctor told her it was acceptable.

In another case, I cared for a patient with questionable mental capacity whose family was strongly urging him to pursue assisted suicide, even though he was not in any pain or distress.

Thankfully, I had the freedom to protect these patients from that pressure.

Assisted suicide is never medically necessary to manage pain. The American Medical Association has stated that it is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer” and poses serious societal risks. This concern is shared by many organizations across the political spectrum, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, and the National Council on Disability.

I could not in good conscience follow this law, even if it meant risking my medical license. I also could not afford to challenge the state of California on my own, but Alliance Defending Freedom stepped in to defend me. Their attorneys ultimately secured a court order permanently preventing California from forcing physicians to facilitate assisted suicide under this law. But there will undoubtedly be future attempts to expand and normalize assisted suicide and force medical professionals to participate in it.

We are in the midst of a profound spiritual and cultural struggle between a culture that protects life and one that accepts death as a solution. The government should never force doctors to practice medicine in ways that violate their conscience or their duty to protect life. And no patient should ever feel that their life is a problem to be solved rather than a person to be cared for.

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Dr. Leslee Cochrane is a full-time hospice physician in Murrieta, California.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.