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Bioethics Keyed to Clark, 9th Ed.
Vacco v. Quill
Citation:
521 U.S. 793, 117 S.Ct. 2293, 138 L.Ed.2d 834 (1997)Facts
The respondents were three physicians who practiced in New York. They asserted that they would be willing to prescribe lethal medication for “mentally competent, terminally ill patients” who were suffering great pain and desired assistance in ending their lives, but were deterred from doing so by New York’s ban on assisting suicide. The physicians, along with three terminally ill patients (who died during litigation), sued the State’s Attorney General, arguing that New York’s distinction between permitting the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment while prohibiting assisted suicide violated equal protection. They contended that both practices were “essentially the same thing” – allowing patients to hasten death. The case centered on whether New York’s law, which treats all competent persons equally on its face (allowing everyone to refuse treatment while prohibiting anyone from assisting suicide), nevertheless created an unconstitutional distinction between similarly situated terminally ill patients.
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