ABSTRACT
Advances in prenatal diagnostics and fetal therapy raise important ethical issues, particularly in the case of severe, life-limiting diseases (LLD). For parents, a prenatally diagnosed severe LLD of the fetus leads to feelings of hopelessness, anxiety, guilt, anger, and deep grief. The decision to continue pregnancy is often associated with great uncertainty and fear, because they do not know what to expect.
Frameworks for perinatal palliative care (PPC) have been developed, aiming to support families during the process of pregnancy, delivery, and after birth by providing high quality palliative care. In previous studies, 40–85 per cent of parents who were offered PPC decided to continue pregnancy. They need to make a lot of decisions, particularly about the degree of medical interventions and it is often challenging to balance risks and benefits for the fetus, the woman, and the future child.
This chapter focuses on results from a literature overview about perinatal palliative care as an option besides the increasing number of new techniques in fetal and neonatal treatment.
