With an impassioned debate and emotional references to the right to life and the teachings of the Pope, Congress and the White House scrambled early yesterday in a last-ditch effort to keep a brain-damaged Florida woman alive.

Their extraordinary actions sent the case of Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged woman, to a federal judge in Florida, who scheduled a hearing for late yesterday on her parents' request that her feeding tube be reinserted, against the wishes of her husband.