Hell, apparently, can wait for a terminally ill Manhattan woman who won a court battle last week giving her the right end her own life — despite the insistence by her uber-religious parents that doing so would damn her to hell.
The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court ruled Friday that Grace Lee could opt to remove the ventilator that is keeping her alive following a month-long legal dispute with her parents. Lee, however, has opted to live.
Lee’s lawyer said yesterday that when he asked her if she wanted to stay on the ventilator — and thus continue to live — she responded “yes.”
Asked if she thought her decision would change, the terminally ill woman responded “no,” her attorney David Smith says.
This
is a far cry from what Lee’s been telling her attorney — and the media
— since she was hospitalized last month; she made it very clear that
she wanted to remove the ventilator.
Lee currently is paralyzed
from the neck down after suffering a stroke last month, and has been
diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
As we mentioned, her devoutly religious parents think she’ll be damned to hell if she opts to essentially take her own life.
“When
someone sets a time and date to die, that is considered as a suicide
and sin,” Lee’s father, Rev. Manho Lee told a local TV station.
Lee,
sadly, is running out of time — doctors gave her anywhere from two
weeks to two months to live when she first went to the hospital last
month.