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Subscribe to RSSA terminally ill woman in New York is fighting for her right to die and to be removed from life support, but her parents are suing to stop her. WNBC's Roseanne Colletti reports.
When your time comes to die, you probably hope that you will be surrounded by loving family members and friends who will support you and help you leave this earth at peace with one another. Sadly, for 28 year-old SungEun Grace Lee, who is dying in a Long Island hospital, that is not happening.
Lee, who goes by the name Grace, is suffering from an incurable tumor boring into her brain stem. She’s paralyzed from the neck down, hooked up to a machine that breathes for her and is on a feeding tube. She’s fully conscious and cognitively alert, but has lost all control over her body and her basic bodily functions.
Eventually, the tumor will kill her.
Rather than suffer a slow, miserable death, Grace has requested that doctors take away the life support. After determining that she was mentally competent, doctors at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., prepared to shut off her life support. But her parents did not agree. They tried to talk hospital officials out of disconnecting her machines.
Her father Man Ho Lee is the pastor of the Antioch Missionary Church in Flushing, N.Y. He and his wife, Jin Ah Lee, could not accept their daughter’s decision. They see what she is doing as a suicide, against God’s will and the work of Satan.
They warned Grace she would go straight to hell if she insisted on no more life-extending care. They urged her to leave the hospital and go to a nursing home.
On September 28, the Lees went to court to have Grace declared incompetent and to have her father appointed as her guardian with the authority to make all medical decisions for her. The fight between Grace and her parents was reported this week in the New York Daily News.
Grace’s court-appointed attorney David A. Smith argued before Nassau County Justice Thomas P. Phelan that there was no foundation at all for the guardianship. Grace had said over and over again that she wanted to die. Her doctors believed she was and remained competent. Judge Phelan agreed and did not grant the guardianship.
Her parents immediately appealed that decision to a higher court. That court has now ruled, refusing to grant the parents request, the New York Daily News reported Friday.
The parents had produced a grainy videotape of Grace which they said shows her saying she wants to live and wants to leave the hospital.
Such tapes made by families with agendas cannot be trusted. As was true in the Terri Schiavo case, what you see on a highly edited tape cannot be trusted. Schiavo’s parents, who did not want her feeding tube removed, said their tape showed she could track a balloon and recognize them.
An autopsy showed Schiavo had long been blind, her brain shrunken to the size of a walnut.
Grace Lee has the absolute right, as do you or I, to stop her medical care. There is no duty for any competent adult to be a patient or to let doctors give treatments that are not wanted. Jehovah’s Witnesses can refuse life-saving blood transfusions; Christian Scientists and Evangelicals can pray rather than go to the hospital when disease appears.
I don't agree that is wise to do, but I do agree that they and the rest of us have a fundamental right to control what is done by doctors to our bodies.
Grace’s parents are doing what they think is right. But they are horribly wrong. Their daughter is going to die, if not tomorrow, then very soon. They need to come to accept her decision about how that will happen. They can try to change her mind but to have their final days with her entangled with hopeless legal proceedings is not what a dying daughter needs.
Let’s hope this family can come together before it is too late to do so.
Arthur Caplan is the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center
1st Question: "are you willing to sign the health proxy to your father?"
2nd Question: "When do you want to leave to go to Nursing Home?
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"God's Will." Just as bad as "National Security."
"army intelligence"
Not letting her die is psychic torture. Being kept alive artificially, with a fully cognitive brain enduring unknown mental anguish, is in no ones interest. Not even God, Allah, Buddha, Odin or the Spaghetti Monster's interests are served.
Didn't Michigan jail Dr. Kevorkian for 8 years (out of 10-25) for acting on this very problem? The right thing to do is the right thing to do.
We also need to support doctor assisted suicide. It's another example of religion's barking-mad nonsense that they continue to oppose it. We have a right to our own lives, and the fact that some might misuse the right, is no reason to take it away from others. We should support the organization (link) compassion & choices. One can also look at Oregon's (link) Death With Dignity Act for the many protections built into the law. Of course, those who believe in the disgusting "redemptive power of suffering" doctrine can die as they wish.
I support Grace's choice.
It is very sad no matter what is your view as regards to this case. I strongly believe anyone with with terminal illness should be giving the choice to either die gracefully or a long slow death. At the same time as a parent I do understand her parent selfish outlook of the whole situation. Before anyone start criticizing her parent, I just want you stop and think and ask yourself this question. How would you feel seeing your child giving up her life and knowing there is nothing you can physically do to help apart from hoping for some divine intervention. The only natural instinct is to try to keep her life as long as possible because all parent expect their kids to succeed them not the other way around. I feel there pain and hope and pray that God should comfort them through this process and their eventual lost. WOW! I am beginning to sound religious and old. this story must have got to me.
I understand what you are saying. A family friend had a son who was in a horrific accident. She wanted her son to live no matter what and kept telling the doctors to do everything to keep him alive. They did. Her son was alive but a "vegetable," and she sat every day and most of the evening at his side at a nursing home until he eventually died two years later. Shortly after his death own her cancer returned and she quickly succumbed.
No parent wants his/her child to die. That is parental instinct. But do you want the child to live for his/her sake or for you own?
once again religion is being used for the selfish reason to make another suffer. She wants to stop treatment so let the poor woman die with dignity!! I am not heartless towards her parents as I have lost a child myself but to watch them suffer is much worse that the loss. May they all find peace and I hope the parents are there for her during her final days.
I hate religion. It is a cancer of the brain.
Good for the courts to defend her right to die. How dare her parents tell her she will go to hell, when it is quite apparent she already is in hell. God does not give us life only to suffer, God gives us life in order to live. She is incapable of living and is condemned to endless suffering, and since God gave us free will she has the God given right to end her life if she wishes.
Once again the cruelty of religion rears it's ugly head. Rather than accept reality these people have made what is a unpleasant and difficult decision horribly worse. Their stone aged beliefs have caused them to give their daughter more pain and grief, as though she wasn't suffering enough. I hope she is able to understand and forgive their ignorance and can go to her death in peace.
The Muslims seem to believe in their religion, they will die for it. The rest of you are gaming.
I think that the parents are trapped by their conviction that their daughter's death would not be a release from her present torment but the beginning of unimaginable suffering for eternity. I wish they could trust in a merciful and compassionate God.
When it comes to end of life issues and wills:
it is extremely important that you have ALL of your legal documents done and witnessed and notarized. You need to have a Medical Power of Attorney done and need to ensure that you appoint someone who is NOT a member of the family. Family members will be torn by their emotions and may not do what you want.
Give your physicians and your hospital copies of all of the documents. This gives them the authorization that they will need when necessary. It provides proof that this was not just some whim on your part and that you thought it out and made sure your medical professionals were aware of your wishes.
When my father was dying and his body was crashing he had never made those documents but had relayed to me what he did and did not want. I had his priest at my side when I got the doctors to take him off life-support. With his priest's support I was able to convince the doctors to do what he had verbalized but never written down.
Don't wait. Do it when you reach legal age. Even if you are 18 and think that you have nothing to worry about.... You are one accident, one disease, away from needing the documents.
I'd like to beat the sh*t out of those parents. It's their distorted beliefs, not becuase they are going to lose their daughter! Makes me mad how stupid and selfish people can be. May she soon rest in peace.
There is no "burning hell"!! God is a Loving, forgiving god. NO WAY would he torment a spirit in a burning hell for wishing to leave a devastating life
These parents are utterly disgusting. I have no sympathy for them. None. They do not deserve to have this woman as their daughter.
Yes, I am sure that is exactly what their "god" wants for their daughter: for her death to be dragged out and more painful, to have her life prolonged a few extra days or weeks for no other reason but that she may suffer more during that period, to leave this earth with her parents fighting her in court instead of lovingly stroking her face and holding her hand.
This is why I cannot stress strongly enough the need for a Living Will. I have had one for years and it clearly out lines exactly which medical interventions I find acceptable and which ones I do not. A detailed legal document leaves nothing to chance or interpretation and relieves your loved ones of the need to make painful decisions in their time of grief.
The thing I can't get over is that they want her to go to a nursing home. They want her to live and suffer through all of this, yet want someone else to take care of her? If they value her life so badly and want to keep her with them so desperately...shouldn't they be doing everything in their power to take her home? How hypocritical of them to want to keep her alive, yet not want to take care of her! I want to scream with rage at what they're doing to her...and what they're saying to her. "We don't want you to die. We don't want you to defy god's will. We want you to stay alive. But we don't want to take care of you."
If there's any doubt about whether or not they're doing this out of parental love, there's your proof right there. They're not.
One of my best friends decided to stop his chemo when it stopped being effective. I hated his decision, but I accepted it. I watched him suffer and degenerate until, finally, the end came and his suffering ended. I miss him terribly, but, I would rather be without him than see him still in pain.
I get it she's their child and they don't wanna lose her. But they need to put themselves in her shoes. Would they want to live a life like that? I wouldn't. They should be spending as much time with their daughter as possible before it's too late. May you rest in peace when your time comes Grace. I don't believe you are going to hell. God bless.
she is miserable living like that, and her parents should know that! just let her go asap...
Tiny little paw prints on your heart. May your fuzzy ones rest beside you.
Grace, A parents love can sometimes be selfish - My heart breaks for all of you as you all feel your decisions are justified. May you find the peace and rest that you seek. Bless you.
Religion poisons everything.
It's a. rough time for Grace and her parents. This shouldn't be on national news. God Bless each one of them.
Her parents are atrocious for using the God/Satan/Hell argument when they really just don't want to let her go. If she can't live without machines then she's not really living. If she's not really living then how can it be suicide? It's one thing if she was going to one day recover and the machines were assisting in that goal but that's not the case here. The machines are only prolonging the agony - how selfish of her parents to put their needs before hers.
It is not suicide, but probably God"s will.