The Court applied the standard of intent to the matter at hand, finding that a doctor who withdraws life support at the request of his patient intends only to respect his patient's wishes. This, the Court said, is a sharp contrast to the doctor who honors a patient's request to end their life, which necessarily requires more than an intent to respect their wishes; namely, it requires the intent to kill the patient. A major difference, the Court determined, in the two scenarios is that the former "may" cause the patient to die from "underlying causes", while the latter "will" cause the patient to die by the hands of the "physician". To this effect the Court quoted a House Judiciary Committee hearing, stating that a physician performing an assisted suicide, "must, necessarily and indubitably, intend primarily that the patient be made dead." Furthermore, in another repudiation of the respondents' argument, the Court noted that a patient removing life support might not actually intend to die, and that death without such a device may not be a certainty.