Health Law Keyed to Furrow
Vacco v. Quill
Facts
Quill (Plaintiff) and three gravely ill patients who have since died sued the New York State Attorney General (Defendant). They urged that because New York (Defendant) permits a competent person to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment, and the refusal of such treatment is "essentially the same thing" as physician-assisted suicide, Defendant's ban on assisted suicide was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The district court disagreed, but the court of appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, finding that those in the final stages of fatal illness who were on life-support systems were allowed to hasten their deaths by choosing to have those systems removed; but those who were in a similar situation, except for the previous attachment of life-sustaining equipment, were not allowed to hasten death by self-administering drugs prescribed by a doctor. The court of appeals concluded that this supposed unequal treatment was not rationally related to any legitimate state interest. Certiorari was granted by the Supreme Court.
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