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To the Editor: Relying on studies indexed in PubMed, Dr Lee and colleagues¹ concluded that fetal pain is not evident before 23 weeks' gestational age. Their assumption is that pain perception requires functioning thalamocortical connections, which are not formed before 6 months. Based on their inference that a fetus at that age cannot feel pain, they conclude that analgesia is not necessary during an abortion performed before the end of the second trimester. I would like to offer 2 critiques of their research.

First, by including a law expert and medical doctors with education and public health backgrounds on the research team, the article appears to be the result of a multidisciplinary group. However, multidisciplinary teams usually include experts from all specialties that could inform the research question, and none of the authors appears to have expertise in fetal (prenatal) psychology.

Second, a multidisciplinary literature review should draw on evidence . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Bobbi J. Lyman, PhD
bjlyman@sbgi.edu
Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Program
Santa Barbara Graduate Institute
Santa Barbara, Calif

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