Who speaks for Terri Schiavo?

Michael Schiavo's lawyer says the key issue in the case is Terri Schiavo's right to be free from unwanted medical treatment.

Lawyers for the Schindlers argue that the key issue is their daughter's right to be free from state-backed intervention seeking to end her life. They add that as a Roman Catholic she has a moral obligation to continue to receive nutrition and hydration, even though it is through a feeding tube.

"She has never made what should be a legally cognizable decision to starve herself to death," says James Bopp of the National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent and Disabled. "We have a terribly conflicted husband here and we should be very skeptical of anything he says."

The Schindlers and their supporters question Mr. Schiavo's motives and his fitness to serve as guardian. They point out that even though he remains married to Terri Schiavo he has long lived with another woman and that they have two children together.

Mr. Bopp says the congressional intervention in the Schiavo case was necessary and appropriate because the Florida courts have applied the wrong legal standard. "This just shows the danger of basing decisions about life and death upon casual oral statements made years ago," he says.

David Garrow, an Emory University legal historian, disagrees. "This is perhaps the most thoroughly reviewed and litigated death in American history," he says. The Florida courts have found, properly, that there is sufficient evidence of Schiavo's intent to end her life, he says.

As for the potential broader implications of congressional involvement in the case, Mr. Garrow says the action may have helped rather than hurt the right-to-die movement. "They have done the right-to-die advocates a huge favor by making this the No. 1 subject of conversation all across the country," he says.

Garrow says Republican leaders in Congress miscalculated the public's reaction to federal government intervention in the Schiavo case. "What is consistently clear across the board year after year is that a huge majority of Americans - including conservatives - want to be able to make these decisions for themselves," he says.

Bopp says the raging debate over Schiavo is shining a light on a practice that had become increasingly common. "This has been going on without public attention," he says. "It's prevalent now, that people who will live for years but whose lives are viewed as not worth living are being starved and dehydrated to death," he says. "This is focusing on the problem."

Mr. Meisel of the University of Pittsburgh also sees the Schiavo debate as a setback for right-to-die advocates. "There has been a period of legal development since 1975 in which it had become increasingly accepted to terminate life support - including feeding tubes - for a person in a persistent vegetative state," he says. "This whole episode will call that into question in doctors' minds."

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