Mercy-killings qualify as allowings when the agent removes only a defense against death that the agent herself had earlier provided (e.g., disconnecting medical equipment by the same personnel who attached it)
agent(Economics terminology applied to medical ethics)
The party in a principal-agent relationship who is instructed to produce the good or service on the principal's behalf — in the medical context, the doctor
Second, causings are distinguished from allowings. In a narrow sense of the word we will here stipulate, one allows a death to occur when: (1) one’s action merely removes a defense the victim otherwise would have had against death; and (2) such removal returns the victim to some morally appropriate baseline (Kamm 1994, 1996; MacMahan 2003). Thus, mercy-killings, or euthanasia, are outside of our deontological obligations (and thus eligible for justification by good consequences) so long as one’s