Dear friends:

The excellent Christian Web site, crosswalk.com, has an insightful and valuable article from the Baptist Press tilted, "The Difference Between a Living Will and a 'Will to Live'."  I am excerpting part of it below.  The full article is at http://www.crosswalk.com/family/1322492.html

The article has two links that offer legal guidance in preparing your "will to live," according to the state in which you live.  This is a great service.

Even though we naturally do not like to think about such things, this subject deserves our attention.    Apparently, in some cases, living wills are misused and abused to put incapacitated people "out of their misery" (according to some) too easily and too conveniently for relatives or busy hospitals and hospices.

May God grant wisdom.

Jim
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The Difference Between a Living Will and a 'Will to Live'
Art Toalston
Baptist Press

It may not be wise to have a living will but, instead, a "Will to Live," as the National Right to Life Committee describes it.

The concept of a living will was aired in various reports about the tragic court-approved dehydration and starvation that led to Terri Schindler Schiavo's death March 31.

A typically worded living will may not respect the beliefs of a pro-life Christian, according to the National Right to Life Committee and the Christian Medical Association.

It's important to be specific about your end-of-life wishes, they say.

Burke J. Balch, director of the NRLC's medical ethics department, noted in a commentary on the right-to-life organization's website, "Denial of food and fluids to people who cannot speak for themselves has been going on for 15 years in this country. It is routine practice in hospitals and nursing homes across the country.... Only in the comparatively rare cases when there is some dispute among relatives [such as the Terri Schiavo case] do these cases reach public attention, normally in the context of lawsuits.

Legal surrogates such as the closest relative or a guardian, or in some cases, even the person's doctor "are daily authorizing the cutoff of food and fluids to patients who are unable to speak for themselves and never gave any indication that they might want to be starved," Balch reiterated.

David Stevens, executive director of the 17,000-member Christian Medical Association, said in a statement after Terri Schiavo's death, "If anything remotely positive can come of this tragedy, it will be a fresh awareness of the need for patients to protect themselves by designating a proxy who will stand up for their clear desires in a case of incapacitation."

Schiavo's life was "unnaturally cut short" by starvation and dehydration that "led to a slow and painful death," Stevens said.

Both organizations have posted documents on the websites by which people can stipulate a pro-life approach to their care if they become incapacitated.

At the National Right to Life Committee website, www.nrlc.org, click on "Will to Live."

At the Christian Medical Association website, www.cmdahome.org, click on "Advance Directive."

(For remainder of article, see http://www.crosswalk.com/family/1322492.html )