(CNSNews.com) - In a last ditch effort before the end of the congressional term on Friday, pro-life GOP lawmakers are promoting a bill that would require women considering an abortion to be informed of the "intense pain their baby would feel during an abortion."

The "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act" was introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) in September, but Congress has failed to act on the legislation until now. The bill, which requires a two-thirds majority to pass, will come before the House on Wednesday.

"Today's society must face the morally troubling question of how much pain an unborn child suffers when he or she is dismembered or poisoned by an abortionist - and does a woman have a right to know that her child is pain-capable and that an abortion will likely impose excruciating pain upon the baby," Smith said at a Capitol Hill press conference on Monday.

Smith called abortions "gruesome," adding, "In this procedure, this child suffers and suffers immeasurably."

He said that anesthesia given to the pregnant woman does not reach her unborn child. At 20 weeks' gestation, he said, a child in the womb can feel pain.

"Under H.R. 6099, women considering an abortion past 20 week fertilization age must be given a brochure describing unborn pain," Smith said. "After receiving the brochure she would be given a decision form on which she may either request or decline direct pain-relieving drugs for her baby.

"The Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act is a modest but necessary expansion of informed consent," he added.

Smith acknowledged that it may be difficult to get the required super majority to pass the bill. If the move failed, he said, "we'll be right back next year."

Smith conceded, however, that it would be "a challenge" to get the legislation passed once the Democrats take control in January.

Smith was joined at Monday's event by representatives of pro-life organizations, while groups supportive of abortion rights are critical of the move.

"This ill-advised bill inappropriately interferes with the way in which doctors care for their patients, advances political agendas over sound science and medicine, and places physicians in jeopardy for providing medically responsible patient care," declared the National Abortion Federation.

The group said in a statement the legislation entailed "forcing women to read and sign a statement with inflammatory rhetoric that projects a level of certainty that far exceeds the scientific research."

"Available science fails to support the conclusions drawn by the legislation and its required statement," the federation said. "Congress should not substitute political agendas for scientific knowledge."

Leading studies on neonatal pain have reached differing conclusions. In an August 2005 study promoted by NARAL Pro-Choice America and other abortion rights groups, the Journal of the American Medical Association said, "Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester."

An earlier study conducted in 1987 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine is widely promoted by the pro-life movement.

The study states, "Numerous lines of evidence suggest that even in the human fetus, pain pathways as well as cortical and subcortical centers necessary for pain perception are well developed late in gestation, and the neurochemical systems now known to be associated with pain transmission and modulation are intact and functional."

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