Kennedy has had a major effect on the issues he has championed throughout his career.  His bipartisan efforts at comprehensive immigration reform (with Sen. John McCain as his co-sponsor) would have created a smoother path to legalization of undocumented workers, a guest-worker program and enforced border security.

He was a strong supporter of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson and dramatically changed U.S. immigration policy by replacing the Immigration Act of 1924. The 1924 act, which had established a national-origin quota system, favored northern and western European immigrants over non-European immigrants. The 1965 act also abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Besides immigration reform, Kennedy has been instrumental in many areas impacting civil rights for all Americans.

"[Kennedy] calls civil rights the 'great unfinished business of the nation,' but no one has done more to complete that task. Whether the work amounted to undoing setbacks imposed by the Reagan administration or the Supreme Court, or extending civil-rights protections to the disabled, Kennedy has been there," said Adam Clymer, author of Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography, in a PBS interview. "He helped outlaw the poll tax, pushed through legislation on housing discrimination, led the Congressional fight against South Africa's apartheid regime. Success, however, has thus far escaped him in the effort to bar discrimination based on sexual orientation."

Kennedy is one of only five senators who publicly support same-sex marriage. The senator's home state of Massachusetts was the first to legalize same-sex marriage. Kennedy is also a sponsor of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crime Act, which passed the House last May and the Senate last September but has been threatened with a veto from President Bush. To get around a veto, Kennedy attached the bill as an amendment to the 2008 defense-authorization bill. That passed in September and then went to conference where the hate-crime amendment was stripped out. Kennedy said he wanted to reintroduce the measure before the end of the current session, reports 365gay.com.

The web site also reports that Kennedy supports the  repeal "don't ask, don't tell," the ban on gays serving openly in the military created under President Bill Clinton.

Last month, Kennedy filed a Senate version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which does not include protections for transgender workers. But Kennedy believes that Senate approval of the bill could pave the way for extending protections to transgender workers next year, when it is expected that Democrats will increase their numbers in Congress and it is possible that a Democratic president will sit in the White House, reports 365gay.com.

More recently, Kennedy teamed with Sen. John McCain on the Secure American and Orderly Immigration Act in 2005 and the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which failed to pass.

Kennedy remains a significant player in presidential politics, most notably when he announced his support for Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid. "With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion," Kennedy said in January when he endorsed Obama for president, reports The Associated Press. "With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay," Kennedy said.

Throughout his treatment, Kennedy is expected to stay in office.

"Unless it's clear his health is in danger by continuing and that his condition is irreversible, I think it's unlikely he would resign, and I don't think he should," said Michael Glennon, a Tufts University professor who served on Kennedy's campaign staff in 1980, to Bloomberg News. "Other senators have confronted debilitating conditions, and it is possible the way the Senate works to ride out a condition like this even for an extended period of time."

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