A federal judge heard pleas on behalf of a brain-damaged Florida woman yesterday, hours after Congress and President Bush acted to grant the woman’s parents a review of a state court order that resulted in her feeding tube being removed on Friday.

In a Tampa courtroom, Judge James Whittemore heard two hours of legal arguments about the fate of Theresa Schiavo, 41, who suffered a serious brain injury more than 15 years ago when her heart stopped, reportedly due to a potassium imbalance caused by an eating disorder. He made no immediate ruling, but signaled that he was aware of the urgency of the case.

“We are rushed and we are somewhat desperate,” a lawyer for the parents, David Gibbs III, told the judge. “Terri may die as I speak.”

Mr. Gibbs said that the removal of the feeding tube was contrary to Mrs. Schiavo’s beliefs as a Roman Catholic. “It is a complete violation to her rights and to her religious liberty, to force her in a position of refusing nutrition,” he said.

An attorney for Mrs. Schiavo, George Felos, asked Judge Whittemore not to disturb the state judge’s order, which followed more than 10 years of legal maneuvering. “Every possible issue has been raised and re-raised, litigated, and re-litigated,” Mr. Felos said. “It’s the elongation of these proceedings that have violated Mrs. Schiavo’s due process rights.”

Judge Whittemore, who was appointed by President Clinton, expressed some skepticism about the parents’ case. He asked their attorneys for additional legal citations and at one point said he would be “hard-pressed” to conclude that the parents were likely to prevail.

After the hearing, Mr. Felos told reporters the case should never have been brought to the federal courts. “It’s obvious to anyone who knows the facts instead of propaganda, that due process was had here and all of Mrs. Schiavo’s rights were protected,” he said.

Mr. Felos said Congress’s action undermined the rights of all citizens. “Each American under the United States Constitution has the right to say, ‘No, I don’t want that medical treatment,'” he said.

Mr. Gibbs said depriving Mrs. Schiavo of food amounted to an attempt to murder her. We don’t believe food and water is medical treatment,” he said after the hearing. “What we believe she is being denied is her fundamental right to life. She is being murdered in a barbaric fashion. She is being starved to death.”

Mrs. Schiavo’s husband, Michael, contends that his wife’s clear wish was that her life would not continue in its current state. Mrs. Schiavo’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, say they don’t believe she ever made such a statement.

“There was never a time where Terri Schiavo said, ‘If I’m ever brain injured, be sure to starve me to death,'” Mr. Gibbs said.

The House of Representatives held an unusual session late Sunday and early yesterday to pass a bill letting the Schindlers take the case to federal court. The Senate passed the measure earlier in a pro forma session. Mr. Bush signed the bill shortly after 1 a.m. yesterday.

Traveling in Arizona yesterday, Mr. Bush said Congress was wise to step in. “Democrats and Republicans in Congress came together last night to give Terri Schiavo’s parents another opportunity to save their daughter’s life, “Mr. Bush said during a Social Security forum in Tucson. “This is a complex case with serious issues, but in extraordinary circumstances like this, it is wise to always err on the side of life,” he said.

While Democrats have accused some Republicans of exploiting Mrs. Schiavo’s case for political reasons, an ABC News poll released yesterday suggested that most Americans do not agree with Congress’s action. However, the wording used in the poll’s questions casts some doubt on the results, according to two pollsters interviewed by The New York Sun.

The ABC poll conducted Sunday found 60% of the 501 adults surveyed opposed the federal legislation passed early yesterday, and 35% approved of it. An even greater number, 70%, said that as a general matter, it is inappropriate for Congress to get involved in such matters.

According to an ABC release, interviewers conducting the telephone poll read the following statements: “Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible.”

Some polling experts said those descriptions are debatable and could have skewed the data. “I would have worded the questions differently,” said a Republican pollster from Rockland County, John McLaughlin.

While Mrs. Schiavo has been fed solely through a tube for the last 15 years, she is not on a respirator, something that comes to mind when “life support” is mentioned. In addition, some doctors say Mrs. Schiavo sometimes responds to simple commands and seems to be aware of visitors. Whether she could benefit from therapy is also the subject of dispute.

“I don’t know that that’s an assertion of commonly agreed fact,” a Democratic pollster, Jeffrey Plaut of Manhattan, said after being read the questions. “I think you probably could quibble.”

ABC’s polling director, Gary Langer, said in an e-mail to the Sun that the descriptions were taken from an appellate court decision in Florida that described Mrs. Schiavo’s condition. The sampling error for the poll was plus or minus 4.5%.

Mr. McLaughlin said it was difficult to word questions in a hotly disputed case. “If they said, ‘If you remove the feeding tube, the person’s going to starve to death,’ you’d get a different response,” the pollster said.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released yesterday also found a majority agreeing with the decision to remove Mrs. Schiavo’s feeding tube. In that poll, 56% of respondents backed the Florida’s court’s decision, while 31% opposed it.

There was some indication yesterday that the White House harbors some concern that the legislation, which Mr. Bush signed in the wee hours yesterday, might be viewed as an unwarranted intrusion into family matters.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush stressed to reporters that the bill set no precedent for similar disputes that might arise.

“This is an extraordinary case,” said the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. Asked if the president would sign a bill that would allow federal courts to intervene in other cases involving patients’ final wishes, Mr. McClellan said, “That’s speculative at this point.”