Termination of pregnancy on the grounds of foetal indication--seen from a gynaecologist's viewpoint

Abstract

As far as the Federal Republic of Germany is concerned, the legal basis of "foetal" indication is, under the aspects of legal philosophy, exclusively directed at the question whether continuation or termination of pregnancy can be expected of, or tolerated by, the pregnant mother. This creates both for the parents and for the physician who is expected to become active or to remain inactive, a particularly tragic conflict arising from the confrontation with the child, which is either certain to be, or suspected of being, seriously diseased, handicapped or deformed or teratoid; this is, so to say, a second dimension of the indication for induced abortion. The conflict situation between the doctor, the patient and the child is analysed in this article on the basis of consultation talks; in such discussions, the doctor is unable to pass any verdict on the value of diseased human life, using medical categories of thinking. The article points out the necessity of acquiring a firm mental hold on the possibilities of prenatal diagnosis and the foetal indication for termination of pregnancy; in this connection, the article explains which of the relevant diseases can be diagnosed by the intrauterine route, with particular emphasis on the rapid development of improved methods of diagnosis which are likely to evolve in the foreseeable future.