Miss Mehling's organization was pressing for the widespread adoption of Living

Wills, whereby a person can, while compos, direct his family and his doctors to withhold certain forms of treatment (including nutrition and water) if he should become comatose and be deemed unlikely to recover. Father Barry sees this as the first step towards euthanasia, "active euthanasia by omission." This is an emotional issue on both sides, and one made both more urgent and more frightening by the tasks medical science has taken on in recent years. Miss Mehling: "Twenty-five years ago, when people were dying at home, you would never have thought about the need to try to shove food down their throats ... It was accepted that people did die."