Truth telling and severe fetal diagnosis: a virtue ethics perspective

Increased use of prenatal technologies has increased the numbers of women and partners whose fetus is diagnosed with a severe impairment. Virtue ethics provides a useful perspective to consider truth telling in this context, specifically how couples and providers interpret the diagnosis and prognosis to create truth. Virtue ethics is person-centered rather than act-centered, with moral actions guided by how a virtuous person would act in the same circumstance. Phronesis (practical wisdom) guides these actions.

Fifteen women and 10 male partners with a severe fetal diagnosis participated in this longitudinal ethnography examining their experiences across 3 available care options: termination, routine obstetric care, and perinatal end-of-life care. Data from 39 interviews were analyzed to determine how they created meaning and truth in context of the diagnosis.

Providers' interactions were usually, but not always, characterized by the practice of phronesis. Couples were in a more complex moral situation than were providers. Those who terminated created a socially acceptable truth within a negative social environment related to abortion. Those seeking routine care had uncertain fetal prognoses and struggled with the meanings of "odds" of survival. One couple with end-of-life care experienced a close alignment of the facts and the truth they made public.