N.J. Woman Didn't Want Food And Fought Until She Died

Ashley is no longer suffering, and no longer fighting. She fought until she died, not wanting any food that could have prolonged her life.

In the end, after numerous attempts to feed her, Ashley got what she wanted, her lawyer told The Daily Record. She got to live out her life as she saw fit.

And her fight against force-feeding is now being compared to similar landmark right-to-die cases, ones where the patient decided their fate despite state intervention.

"I feel glad that she is no longer suffering but I feel a profound sense of sadness that modern science and all the efforts by a strong, loving family couldn't overcome this problem," Edward G. D'Alessandro, Ashley's court-appointed attorney, told The Daily Record.

Ashley, 30, suffered from anorexia and bulimia since she was an adolescent.

Known only as "Ashley G.," the Morris County woman died Feb. 20 at Morristown Medical Center, three months after a Superior Court judge ruled that she could not be artificially fed against her wishes, according to The Daily Record.

Even her mother had said that Ashley wanted peace after trying for years to overcome her eating disorders, according to the report.

In the end, it was Superior Court Judge Paul Armstrong who on Nov. 21, 2016, determined the woman's testimony against being force-fed was "forthright, responsive, knowing, intelligent, voluntary, steadfast and credible," according to The Daily Mail.

Armstrong compared it to similar "landmark" cases in which patients, their families and physicians were making what they considered proper, though difficult, medical decisions.

In the 1970s, as a young attorney, Armstrong represented the parents of Karen Ann Quinlan as they fought successfully to have their 21-year-old daughter removed from a ventilator so she could die, according to the report. Quinlan was in a persistent vegetative state after mixing alcohol with Valium at a party.

Armstrong said that the Quinlan case had set the standard for how right-to-die cases should be handled in New Jersey and elsewhere, allowing the patient more control. In Ashley's case, the result was similar.

"What emanated from the Quinlan case was the hospice movement," he told nj.com. "We set a standard for how we care for one another at the end of life. Now, every state in the nation has living wills for people."

The state Department of Human Services, however, wanted Ashley to be force-fed through a tube and assisted through an experimental program of Ketamine use to treat her depression, the Daily Record reported.

In June 2016, she was tube fed at Morristown Medical Center and gained weight – but the process damaged her heart, the Daily Record reported.

The judge said that those around her agreed it is in A.G.'s best interests to "be transferred to a palliative care unit at the hospital where she won't be force-fed," the Daily Record reported.

Read the full report here.