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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress early on Monday rushed legislation to President Bush (news - web sites) aimed at prolonging the life of a brain-damaged woman, Terri Schiavo, in an extraordinary intervention to move the Florida case into the jurisdiction of federal courts.
The House of Representatives passed the Republican-backed measure 203-58 shortly after midnight, after the Senate cleared it unanimously Sunday.
Bush cut short a Texas vacation and flew back to Washington to be available to sign the bill immediately in a bid to restore the feeding tube that was removed from the 41-year-old woman Friday.
House members who scattered for a two-week recess were summoned to Washington for the late-night session after some Democrats demanded time to debate the measure, which they condemned for putting Congress in the middle of a wrenching family dispute and for undermining state's rights.
Despite the sudden notice, 261 of the House's 435 members voted, and gave the measure well over the two-thirds majority required under the streamlined procedure.
"We are very very thankful to have crossed this bridge," Suzanne Vitadamo, Terri Schiavo's sister, told reporters just after the vote. "We are hopeful, we are very hopeful, that the federal courts will follow the will of Congress and save my sister's life."
The Senate cleared the bill by unanimous consent in an almost empty chamber after House and Senate leaders reached an agreement on it Saturday.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said he expected the feeding would be resumed so Schiavo could stay alive while the case was pursued in federal courts.
Frist said the bill did not guarantee a particular outcome, and was passed "under unique circumstances" and should not set precedents for similar cases.
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In the House debate, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) chairman, said Florida's courts were "enforcing a merciless directive to deprive Terri Schiavo of her right to life."
Congress must "reinforce the law's commitment to justice and compassion for all Americans, particularly the most vulnerable," the Wisconsin Republican said.
But Rep. Robert Wexler (news, bio, voting record), a Florida Democrat, said Congress was seeking to undermine Florida's court system and the seven years of reviews of the case in which 19 judges participated.
"Tonight this Congress is about to commit a travesty. Tonight congressional leaders are poised to appoint this Congress as a judge and a jury," said Rep. Jim Davis (news, bio, voting record), another Florida Democrat.
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 political exploitation of a tragic family matter.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California called the "constitutionally dubious legislation" a "highly irregular and an improper" use of legislative authority.
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.
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.
Rep. Barney Frank (news, bio, voting record), a Massachusetts Democrat, said lawmakers were voting according to their own ideological bias, not necessarily in Schiavo's interest. "I don't know what her wishes were, but neither do any of you," he said.
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