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Study Finds 29-Week Fetuses Probably Feel No Pain and Need No Abortion Anesthesia - New York Times

The report, being published today in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a review of several hundred scientific papers, and it says that nerve connections in the brain are unlikely to have developed enough for the fetus to feel pain before 29 weeks.

Dr. Rosen said that response in the fetus did not mean it felt pain, but was instead more likely to be a reflex, like the leg jerk that occurs in adults when doctors tap them on the knee with a rubber hammer.

If the child in the womb is sensitive to touch, then it would seem that he/she is sensitive to “an unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity” as pain is defined at Dictionary.com.