WASHINGTON - US senators stepped up efforts Friday to stop doctors from turning off the feeding tube of a woman who has been in a vegetative state for 15 years while her husband and parents fight over whether she should be kept alive.
A court has ruled the tube can be removed from 41-year-old Terri Schiavo at 1:00 pm (1800 GMT) but many lawmakers in Florida and Washington have taken up the case.
The Senate Health Committee asked for Terri Schiavo and her husband, Michael, to be brought to Washington to testify.
Schiavo`s heart stopped in 1990 inflicting severe brain damage and she has been in hospital ever since. Doctors have said her condition is irreversible and Michael Schiavo says his wife told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have fought attempts to let their daughter die, insisting she could get better.
Experts have said Terri Schiavo would die in about two weeks if the tube is taken out.
Senate Health Committee chairman Mike Enzi asked for the woman and her husband to appear before a hearing on March 28. "Terri Schiavo`s very survival has become a national discussion," he said, adding: "We must not let her spirit to be extinguished."
"Although I understand this is an emotional and difficult situation for the Schiavo family, I believe we must keep in mind that a human life is at stake and immediate action is required to ensure that a decision in this matter is not reached in haste," Enzi said.
The parents appealed to the US Supreme Court, and a Florida court to stop the husband from ordering the removal of the feeding tube.
Attempts have also been made in the Florida state legislature and the US Congress to pass legislation that would keep Schiavo alive. But the two chambers of Congress did not agree a final formulation of a bill before leaving for an Easter recess.
"To knowingly and purposely starve Ms Schiavo to death would be callous, cruel and immoral," said Bill Frist, the head of the Republican majority in the Senate who is a former heart surgeon.
President George W. Bush also released a statement acknowledging that the Schiavo case "raises complex issues".
"Yet in instances like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws, and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," added Bush. "Those who live at the mercy of others deserve our special care and concern."
The United States has been agonizing over the case for years.
The Florida legislature passed a law in 2003 to prevent an earlier attempt to let Schiavo die. But the state`s supreme court later ruled the measure unconstitutional.
Michael Schiavo won one million dollars for medical negligence in his wife`s case in 1992, but according to his lawyers nearly all of the money has gone on medical and legal fees.
A businessman offered the husband, who has started a new relationship, one million dollars to leave Terri Schiavo`s parents to decide her fate. But he rejected the money.
Michael Schiavo rarely talks to the media, but he spoke in public this week to express his anger at attempts to keep his wife alive.
"She doesn`t feel pain. She doesn`t feel hunger," Schiavo told a Florida newspaper, adding that his wife "will drift off to a nice little sleep and eventually pass on to be with God."
Arthur Caplan, director of the Center of Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was a decision to be taken by the husband, not by the parents.
"Normally we don`t have families fighting for such long, many years. But stopping feeding tubes is absolutely common in the United States, we stop them everyday."
03/18/2005 17:56 GMT