Experiences of maternal-fetal medicine specialists conducting feticide

This study is a qualitative analysis of 14 interviews with specialists in maternal-fetal medicine in Israel who implement feticide by injection at a late stage of pregnancy. The goal of this study was to reach an interpretive understanding of the physicians' experience. The study focuses on five major themes: (1) involvement in the decision-making process; (2) emotional control and medical expertise; (3) perception of feticide as dirty work; (4) strategies to minimize the procedure's inherent difficulty; and (5) the social and medical context of silence and silencing. The revealed themes capture the timeline of the procedure and address the individual, dyadic, and medical and social contexts in which feticide is carried out - all of which construct the physician's experience. The concept of moral uncertainty is useful in conceptualizing the physicians' experience, allowing researcher to draw policy and practical implications.