The arguments surrounding Terri Schiavo will live on in statehouse debate and new laws if an emerging coalition of disability-rights activists and right-to-lifers succeed in turning the national agony over her case into a re-examination of when and how our lives come to an end.

So far, only a few legislators in a handful of states have sought significant changes to their laws, which define the fundamental elements at stake — how a person can set limits on their medical care, who gets to decide what their wishes are, what evidence is needed to prove it.

None have yet become law and the chances for most, if not all, are slim this year, with some legislatures finished and many far along in their work for this session. But both Republicans and Democrats say the arguments aren’t going away.

The debate is an effort to strike a new balance between one stance that argues that medical care and morality mean life must be pursued in nearly all cases, and another stance, crafted over decades of changing views about death, that some may choose to end drastically damaged lives that depend on artificial means.

“I really wanted to make sure we gave a default for life and not for death,” said Kansas state Rep. Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Republican who helped revive a measure that would give courts a greater chance to review decisions to end life-sustaining care, lessening the role of guardians or doctors.

An angel, a battery-operated candle and a memorial note signed by her caregivers sit on the bed table in Terri Schiavo's room Friday at Hospice House Woodside in Pinellas Park, Fla., a day after her death.

Legislation has also been introduced in Alabama, Hawaii, Louisiana, Minnesota and South Dakota. The Louisiana bill is called the “Human Dignity Act”; Alabama’s is the “Starvation and Dehydration Prevention Act.”

Many measures predate recent weeks of attention to Schiavo, though some drew their inspiration directly from the agonized public debate over the 41-year-old woman’s death — like one in Missouri introduced last Thursday, the day Schiavo died.