Women who seek late-term abortions would automatically get information telling them that the unborn child can feel pain and asking if they want the fetus to have anesthesia during the abortion process, under a bill sponsored by Lincoln Sen. Mike Foley.

Foley said LB752 is based on a growing body of evidence that an unborn child of 20 weeks, and perhaps younger, can feel pain. Session '05

The bill is modeled after the federal "fetal pain awareness act" that has been introduced in Congress. It requires that women seeking an abortion have information that the abortion procedure will cause pain to the unborn child, he said.

But pro-choice leaders say the information about a fetus feeling pain is political rather than factual.

"There is a great deal of debate in the medical community about this issue and what is contained in this bill is based on speculation and inference," said Bobbie Kierstead, with Planned Parenthood Nebraska and Council Bluffs.

"There is no agreement in the scientific community," she said. "In fact, there have been several court cases that touched on this. And what the courts have found is that there is no scientific agreement."

Similar bills in Congress and in several other states are "another way for the anti-choice community to chip away at reproduction rights," she said.

But Foley said the measure is a way to try to protect unborn children when the courts have said that the state cannot ban late-term abortions.

"But we can insist that women be told the truth about how the abortion will impact the unborn child," he said.

The bill says that an unborn child of at least 20 weeks gestational age "has the physical structures necessary to feel pain" and that an unborn child draws away from surgical instruments in a manner that would be interpreted as a response to pain in an adult.

The bill also says that there is "substantial medical evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain even if the woman having the abortion receives pain-reducing drugs."

But Kierstead said that "virtually all the information in the bill that is stated as fact is actually conjecture."

"Our position is that women should always have the most complete and scientifically accurate information available," she said. When a woman goes to a doctor's office, what she wants "is health-care information, not politics.

"No one goes to the doctor to hear a government-mandated lecture," she said.

Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.