A UK scientist accused the lawyers arguing for the end of Roe v. Wade before the Supreme Court of misinterpreting his research, The Observer reported.

According to the newspaper, Giandomenico Iannetti, a pain expert at the University College London, said his research — which used imaging to study the adult brain's response to pain — was being "misinterpreted and used in a very clever way to prove a point" in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

Dobbs is a pending case in the US Supreme Court that directly challenges Roe v. Wade and centers on a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. A draft opinion on the case, written by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked last week and suggested the justices were poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Iannetti's research was cited in a medical paper on fetal pain that was published in the "Journal of Medical Ethics" in 2020 by the psychologist Stuart Derbyshire.