When Can Fetuses Feel Pain?

New Report Says Probably Not Until Final Months Of Pregnancy

(AP)  Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor-in-chief, said the decision to publish the review was not politically motivated.

"Oh, please," DeAngelis said. "If I had a political agenda, I wouldn't pick fetal pain."

JAMA does not publish "politically motivated science. We publish data-based, evidence-based science," DeAngelis said.

The measure pending in Congress would affect about 18,000 U.S. abortions a year performed in the fifth month of pregnancy or later, said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. He said the review is slanted.

But Rosen said the researchers "tried to review the literature in an unbiased fashion. This was a multidisciplinary effort by experts on anesthesia, neuroanatomy, obstetrics and neonatal development."

Rosen also said that administering anesthesia or painkillers to the fetus could pose health risks to the mother.

When doctors operate on fetuses to correct defects before birth, general anesthesia is given to the mother primarily to immobilize the fetus and to make the uterus relax, Rosen said. Anesthesia during fetal surgery increases the mother's risks for breathing problems and bleeding from a relaxed uterus, the researchers said.

Rosen said those risks are medically acceptable when the goal is to save the fetus but there's not enough evidence to show any benefit from fetus-directed anesthesia during an abortion.

Administering anesthesia directly to the fetus is also sometimes done but generally to reduce the release of potentially harmful fetal stress hormones, Rosen said. There is little research on its effects, the authors said.

Anand, the researcher from Arkansas, said the authors excluded or minimized evidence suggesting fetal pain sensation begins in the second trimester and wrongly assume that fetuses' brains sense pain in the same way as adult brains.

While Anand has testified as an expert witness for the government in court cases opposing some late-term abortions, he said he is not anti-abortion and that his views are based on years of fetal pain research.