mr. speaker , i thank the chairman for yielding me this time . 
i also want to thank the speaker for the difficult decision to call the members back , though the difficult decision maybe was made less difficult by the circumstances . 
the hard work of the gentleman from wisconsin ( mr. sensenbrenner ) xz4003650 over the last few days ; of the gentleman from texas ( mr. delay ) xz4001040 , majority leader ; the work of the gentleman from maryland ( mr. hoyer ) xz4001890 , who may not be on the same side as i am when we take the vote tonight , but who has certainly worked hard to see what we could do to make this work in the best possible way for the members , who were called back . 
terri schiavo is in a terrible situation tonight . 
she has been in a terrible situation for a long time , a situation none of us would want to be in , a situation we would not want our loved ones in , a situation we would not have to decide about , but when this happens we do have to decide . 
and there is clearly a conflict between members of terri 's family about what she would want to happen . 
someone observed earlier that when one is her age they probably have not written that down yet , and of course that is right . 
when one is my age they probably should have written that down , and sometime in the next few days i am going to check to see what i wrote 10 years ago and if i still agree with what i wrote 10 years ago , as i suspect many of us will . 
but she had not written it down . 
some people seem to think she would feel much differently about this than others . 
and what this legislation would do is let a judge come in and look at all the facts one more time and determine if what is happening should continue to happen . 
i know others have said there is no real difference in just giving someone food and water and putting someone on incredible life support systems . 
i see a difference . 
i think most americans see a difference . 
we will see if a judge sees a difference , if in fact we are able to give a judge that opportunity . 
we are not deciding tonight anything that a family should be deciding . 
we are asking a judge to come in and decide what a family among themselves could not decide . 
i have heard other people here talk about family members getting together and making this tough decision . 
but nobody has talked about family members getting together and fighting over that decision and what they would want to happen if that fight happened in their family . 
the vote tonight will be a bipartisan vote . 
this is not about democrats or republicans . 
i hope this is not about politics . 
i hope this is about terri schiavo . 
this bill also has a study that would require us to look at other circumstances and see if we should have the broader legislation that the gentleman from florida ( mr. weldon ) xz4004271 and others , democrats and republicans , introduced last week . 
mr. speaker , i urge that this legislation pass , that we get this done as quickly as possible . 
