Lawyers and politicians were today locked in a chaotic struggle to decide the future of coma victim Terri Schiavo who has been kept alive by a feeding tube for 15 years.

Doctors were today due to remove the tube at 6pm (1pm local time) in compliance with a court order, but as the clock ticked towards the deadline a state judge ordered a temporary reprieve for the brain-damaged woman.

David Demers, the chief judge of Pinellas Circuit Court near the hospice where the 41-year-old Florida woman lies in a vegetative state, ordered that the tube should remain in place past 1pm while Judge George Greer, who is presiding over the tangled affair, dealt with conflicting legal issues.

But minutes later, as protesters from across America celebrated the legal stay, Judge Greer issued his own ruling that the tube should be withdrawn.

The Schiavo case has galvanised America. Mrs Schiavo was irretrievably brain damaged by a rare potassium imbalance in 1990, that caused her heart to stop. As she has lain motionless on her hospital bed, Mrs Schiavo has been the subject of a long-running and bitter row between her husband, Michael, who wants to remove the tube, and her parents, who want to keep her alive.

As the battle continued in the courts today, US politicians keen to stop her death issued legal documents in their own attempt to block doctors from disconnecting the tube.

The House of Representatives issued sub-poenas requiring Mrs Schiavo and her husband to appear before the House's committee on health. House leaders were hoping that the sub-poena would effectively give Mrs Schiavo federal protection from harm, as a congressional witness, although legal experts pooh-poohed this as legally unsound.

A spokesman for Pinella Circuit Court later confirmed this. “Judge Greer held a hearing on the congressional
committee’s motion to intervene in the case. He denied it and
reinstated the order (to remove Schiavo’s feeding tube),” said
Ron Stuart.

A court ruled at her husband's request that her feeding tube could be removed today. But such is the strength of feeling that the case has engendered in conservative America, politicians in Washington made a desperate attempt to pass legislation to stop that happening. Activist groups across the United States have also backed Mrs Schiavo's parents.

If Terri Schiavo's tube is removed, she would take about two weeks to die. Doctors say she has no hope of recovery, and Michael Schiavo says that his wife told him years ago that if anything ever happened to her she would not want to be kept alive artificially. He has begun another relationship, and has two children with his new partner.

However, her parents Bob and Mary Schindler have fought attempts to let their daughter die, insisting she could get better. And in a Hollywood-style twist, a businessman has stepped in to offer $1 million to her husband if he allowed his wife's parents to decide her fate.

Michael Schiavo has turned down the cash and angrily rejected the moves to keep his wife alive, which he dubs unwarranted interference. "Are they going to start pushing legislation for removing ventilators? Are they going to start forcing people to take chemo against their wishes?" he asked.

"She doesn't feel pain. She doesn't feel hunger," Mr Schiavo said, adding that his wife "will drift off to a nice little sleep and eventually pass on to be with God".

An award of $1 million in medical negligence compensation has been largely eaten up by medical expenses and legal bills caused by the 12 year wrangle.

On a national wave of concern, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to give federal courts the power to review cases where life support patients do not leave written instructions on whether they want to be kept alive. The Senate yesterday went one step further, approving a measure that only mentions Mrs Schiavo and would allow a final medical review in her case.

But the Senate's failure to adopt the House's version of the bill appeared to have backfired. Leaders from both houses House and Senate leaders have been working through the night in the hope of reaching a compromise version of both bills before today's deadline.

The Schiavo case has been dragging on for years, and Mrs Schiavo's feeding tube has actually been unplugged twice and then reconnected. In 2003, the Florida legislature passed a law to block an earlier attempt to let her die.

The Florida Supreme Court later ruled the measure unconstitutional. Since then, the US Congress has become involved, while the US Supreme Court yesterday rejected an emergency appeal filed by her parents.

The Washington Post today branded Congress' efforts to interfere "a warrantless intervention ... in a specific case that - no matter how much members might dislike the result - is no business of Congress".

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