Judge says 69-pound anorexic woman has right to starve [View all]

A New Jersey judge ruled Monday that a woman who weighs 69 pounds and has fought anorexia for most of her life has the right to starve.

The woman, 29, spent nearly two years in a psychiatric hospital and told a court this month that she refused to eat any food and wished to enter palliative care instead, which focuses on the comfort of the seriously or terminally ill.

A Superior Court judge ruled Monday that she cannot be fed against her will, and it is in her best interest to be transferred to a palliative care unit.

In a 140-minute opinion delivered orally at the bench, and shaped by landmark court decisions on personal self-determination, Morris County Judge Paul Armstrong called the woman’s testimony, “forthright, responsive, knowing, intelligent, voluntary, steadfast and credible,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Therefore, he ruled, the woman, referred to only as A.G., has the mental capacity to choose not to accept nutrition.

Read more: http://journaltimes.com/now/today/judge-says--pound-anorexic-woman-has-right-to-starve/article_087efbbc-ab83-559e-aa76-58213a008e3b.html