Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed for the last time on March 18. Three days later, Congress held an emergency session and passed the Terri Schiavo bill, which allowed her case to be considered by a federal judge. President George W. Bush flew back from his ranch in Texas on Palm Sunday to sign it into law.

Senator Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican who pressed the case most, said he has since had second thoughts about Congress' involvement.

"I really probably come to the view this has to be more resolved at the state level," Martinez said. "Seems like the kind of issue the state courts deal with."

Representative Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana, said that in his five years in office, he saw Congress do its "worst job communicating" during the Schiavo episode.

Reverberated Politically

The case has reverberated politically for months, contributing to a sharp drop in approval ratings for the Republican-controlled Congress, whose leaders convened an extraordinary emergency session in March to pass legislation to protect Schiavo, a dying Florida woman who had been in a comatose state for years.

With the autopsy concluding that no treatment could have improved her condition and that she was unaware of her surroundings when her feeding tube was removed, lawmakers backed away from their earlier comments and said they had simply wanted to give her family proper access to the courts.

The case has also given Democrats ammunition to use against the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, a transplant surgeon who, on the Senate floor, voiced his opinion about Schiavo's condition based on videotapes in which she appears to react to some stimuli.

Aides to Frist, a Tennesseean and a likely presidential candidate in 2008, angrily said he had never made a formal diagnosis and thus had nothing to retract.

Democrats cited the autopsy results as proof that Schiavo's husband and critics of federal intervention had been vindicated.

'She Does Respond'

Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democratic who was among the most vocal critics of the Schiavo bill, said: "I think it will be seen at some point as a turning point in America about what's going on with the Republican Party -- namely that you have this fanatical party willing to impose its own views on people and, frankly, powerful enough to do it. This is particularly a problem for Dr. Frist. This is a direct refutation of his TV diagnosis."

Frist did not respond to questions about the autopsy findings, saying he had not had time to review them. His spokeswoman, Amy Call, sought out reporters who asked about the case to assert that Frist "never made a diagnosis."

Throughout the floor debates on Schiavo's fate, Republicans asserted that she was responsive to external stimuli and that the removal of her feeding and hydration tubes would lead to the "murder" of a conscious woman. Emotional speeches on the floors of both chambers took her mental state into account, portraying her as alert and lively.

Frist, in his floor statement on March 17, said that after viewing a videotape of Schiavo, it was clear she was responsive. "To be able to make a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state which is not brain dead; it is not coma; it is a specific diagnosis and typically takes multiple examinations over a period of time, because you are looking for responsiveness. I have looked at the video footage," Frist said. "Based on the footage provided to me, which was part of the facts of the case, she does respond."

Terri Schiavo Bill

After a seven-year legal struggle, Schiavo's feeding tube was removed for the last time on March 18. Three days later, in a bid to bring her case into federal court, Congress held its emergency session and passed the Terri Schiavo bill, which allowed her case to be considered by a federal judge. President George W. Bush flew back from his ranch in Texas on Palm Sunday to sign it into law.

Representative Tom DeLay, a Republican from Texas and the House majority leader who broke a long silence during ethical troubles to speak out for Schiavo, called it the "Palm Sunday compromise."

A spokesman for DeLay declined to answer any questions about the autopsy, except to say that his "thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of Terri Schiavo."