Although not all physicians agreed with the various constraints of the Hippocratic Oath, as time progressed, the followers of many religious sects, including Jewish, Catholics, Christians, and even Muslims believed the oath and supported it. These physicians who generally refused to assist suicide because they believed that those acts were morally wrong and that such actions an inappropriate practice and that in their religion beliefs such deeds would "violates God's authority over life, which is God's gift." .
In the Colonial period - the 1600's - many people from various persecuted religions in Europe chose to escape to America, and the physicians within these groups, carried with them the belief that assisted suicide was immoral. Throughout the early period of the colonies and later the United States, there were no specific laws created regarding assisted suicide as a manner of death, because religious belief largely prohibited even consideration of any such practice. On December 10th, 1828, New York was the first state that specifically prohibits assisted suicide and it initiated a new law for America, the 14th amendment, to condemn the acts of assisting suicide. These concepts remained largely in place as the law until the 1970's. As time evolved, changes in people's mindset were leading to potential shifts and turns with such law and practices. Gradually patients began to seek the right to choose to receive treatment or to refuse further treatment if they did not want to prolong their agony rather than the doctor getting to make the decision. Thus, in what became a groundbreaking law, in 1976, California became the first state to allow terminally ill patients to die when such a patient chooses to withdraw further treatment. "By 1977, eight states - California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, North Carolina, and Texas - had signed right-to-die bills into law.
