Vacco Vs Quill

The Equal Protection Clause under the fourteenth amendment of the U.S. constitution states that “No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This clause is utilized upon arguing for allowing assisted suicide due to the fact that “New York permits a competent person to refuse life sustaining medical treatment, and because the refusal of such treatment is ‘essentially the same thing’ as a physician assisted suicide…” (Vacco v Quill, p. 423). As previously stated, both refusing medical treatment that could keep you from death, or prolong the process, and assisted suicide are being drawn by comparison to make the claim or argument that both cases should be treated equally under the Equal Protection

The Doctrine of Doing & Allowing essentially outlines a lens that aids in drawing a distinction between doing something to cause the outcome, or allowing something that leads to an identical outcome. In this particular case, the Doctrine of Doing & Allowing aided the supreme court in rejecting the claim made by this case as a parallel can be found between a patient requesting assisted suicide through lethal medical treatment and a patient refusing to be put on a medical treatment such as life-support or some other form of treatment that the profession utilizes to prolong the process of death. (Vacco v. Quill, p. 423). J.J. Thomson’s concerns with the Doctrine of Doing & Allowing are quite complicated as he attempts to dig a bit deeper into the revised version that had been altered to incorporate both killing, allowing or letting die, “active euthanasia and passive euthanasia” (Thomson, pg. 500). His reason for doing so is mainly focused on presenting examples or cases where doing and allowing are judged by the morality factor of the circumstance, not solely the fact that the patient was killed or allowed to die. (Thomson,

153). This passage explains Quinn’s focus on narrowing the Doctrine of Doing & Allowing to incorporate morality, as does Thomson. Both individuals are drawn to the idea of a more detailed or revised version of the traditional Doctrine of Doing & Allowing, yet there does not seem to be a distinct difference between their thoughts. Quinn is mainly concerned with this idea of a “Harmful positive agency,” which is “an agent’s most direct contribution to the harm…an action,” and a “Harmful negative agency,” which is “the most direction contribution in an inaction, a failure to prevent the harm.” (Quinn, pg. 163). Thomson addresses the fact that in one grouping of cases, the doctor directly kills the patient by “drug-providing/injecting” whereas the doctor indirectly kills the patient by some variation of “non/disconnecting.” These are awfully similar to that of Quinn’s agencies, as the reason for these lies within intervention, whether it be direct or indirect (action or inaction) or surrounding the overall perspective of morality and which particular case of action or inaction is seen as “morally permissible,” or “morally impermissible.” (Thomson,