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Terminally-Ill Woman Granted Right To Die Now Wants To Live
By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 7, 2012
Modified Oct 7, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 7, 2012
Modified Oct 7, 2012
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This week, state courts ruled in favor of Grace Lee, the terminally-ill Manhattan woman who has been battling her family for the right to die. But after she won in court, she decided to take a moment before finalizing her decision—and now, Lee has told her attorney that she wants to keep living. “She told me that she’s not going to exercise her right to remove the ventilator, and she expects that is not going to change,” attorney David Smith told the Post. “I asked her, ‘Are you doing this to make peace with your parents?’ and her clear-as-a-bell answer was: ‘I am doing this to make peace with God.'"
Lee, 28, was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor recently, which left her paralyzed from the neck down. She has been hooked up to a breathing machine to stay alive, and fought for her right to die, even though her devoutly religious parents saw it as suicide that would lead her to hell. She can only comunicate now by mouthing words, or blinking.
This week, it is expected that Lee will appoint her parents as her health-care proxies; regardless of the fact that she has decided to keep living, Smith said that it was important to her to have won the right to choose what happens to her: “You’re paralyzed, and what do you have left but the expression of your own free will?” Smith said.
Doctors estimate that she only has between two weeks and two months to live; Smith told the News that she is getting worse: “I’m not a doctor, but my own observation is that she looks substantially weaker than she was a week ago,” Smith said. “She’s very, very weak.”
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grace lee
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right to die
terminally ill
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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