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Senate Approves Bill
In Terri Case
By Donna Smith
3-20-5



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Sunday unanimously passed legislation aimed at prolonging the life of a brain-damaged woman, Terri Schiavo, in an extraordinary intervention by Congress to move the Florida case into the jurisdiction of federal courts.
 
President Bush cut short a Texas vacation and flew back to Washington to sign the bill as soon as it passes both houses of Congress.
 
The House of Representatives is expected to take up the same bill and pass it early Monday morning after a brief delay caused by objections by some Democrats who said it put Congress in the middle of a family dispute and undermined state rights.
 
The 41-year-old woman's feeding tube was removed on Friday under a Florida state court order. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said he expected the state courts to order feeding be resumed so Schiavo could stay alive while the case was pursued in federal courts.
 
"We in the Senate recognize that it is extraordinary that we as a body act," Frist said. "But these are extraordinary circumstances that center on the most fundamental of human values and virtues, the sanctity of human life."
 
While Schiavo's husband says she asked not to be kept alive artificially, the rest of her family has disagreed.
 
The feeding tube has twice been halted and resumed in the past amid legal wrangles, and Schiavo was expected to survive for one to two weeks without it.
 
Until now, federal courts have turned the case back to state courts, but intense lobbying by Christian conservatives and widespread publicity pushed lawmakers to act.
 
Several Democrats objected, calling the legislation a "grotesque" intervention in a tragic family matter.
 
"What the majority is proposing to do here is to take a tragic personal situation and make it grotesque," said Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat.
 
"It is not the place of Congress, at the eleventh hour, in the most abusive fashion, to undermine the Florida court system, particularly given the fact that it has been seven years and 19 judges who have participated," said Florida Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler.
 
In Pinellas Park, Florida, Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, pleaded for lawmakers to act. "My daughter is in the building behind me, starving to death," she told reporters. "Please, please, please save my little girl."
 
Lawmakers forged a deal on the bill on Saturday, 24 hours after doctors removed the feeding tube. House action was delayed by objections, but Republican and Democratic leaders later agreed to begin a debate Sunday night with the final vote to occur shortly after midnight.
 
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "This legislation will give her parents another opportunity to make sure that her rights have been protected."
 
Schiavo's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, has long argued -- and has been supported by the courts -- that his wife would not have wanted to live in such a condition.
 
He accused Congress of political opportunism and "trampling all over a personal family matter."
 
He vowed to fight on, telling CNN, "I made that promise to her."
 
However, Bobby Schindler, her brother, said the family was grateful for what Congress was doing. "Terri is alive. She's not dying. She's a human being," he said.
 
Schiavo has been fed through a stomach tube since a heart attack starved her brain of oxygen in 1990, leaving her in what the courts declared was a persistent vegetative state.
 
The Washington Post said the case would excite the party's anti-abortion base and put pressure on Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, who faces re-election next year.
 
Republican Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida said, "This is not a political issue. This is an issue about saving a life."
 
Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.
 
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