ABSTRACT
Rising life expectancy, coupled with safer childbearing and smaller families means Western women no longer spend most of their adult lives in a state of reproductive activity. With donor sperm and self-insemination, single mothers, and lesbian families, impregnation can occur without sex, or even a man. Innovatory procedures such as intrauterine photography, phonendoscopic recordings, and increasingly refined sonography have given a glimpse of life inside the womb. Several studies indicate that maternal experience can be transmitted directly to the fetus. For many women, contentment with pregnancy is disturbed from the early weeks by knowledge that prenatal screening brings with it an awesome dilemma. One of the paradoxes of today is the emphasis on quality of life, which together with technological advances poses a possibility of selective termination of multiple or abnormal fetuses. Unexpected labour can be frightening when the woman is caught unawares, and the emotional trajectory of pregnancy is abruptly ended.
