Health professionals and the decision of termination of pregnancy for fetal abnormality: between clinical indications and ethical embarrassments

Termination of pregnancy for fetal abnormality (TOP) forms an exemplary situation of the ethical tensions traversing health professionals decisions and practices. Although embedded within a legal framework, it raises ethical concerns supported by various levels of uncertainties brought up by the professionals, when TOP takes shape in concrete decisions and practices. It is what this paper explores by pointing up three categories of uncertainty which relate to the decision-making process, to the legitimacy of the act - field of embarrassment for the professionals when medical and social norms are conflictual -, and to its effective realization for the actors who deal with and have to assume it.