Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to understand the decision making process of pregnant women who have to consider whether to undergo amniocentesis or not.
Methods
The subjects, who all gave their consent to be interviewed, were 5 women in their 26th to 30th week of pregnancy. The women were interviewed in a semi-structured manner and interviews were recorded and transcribed. A qualitative method was used for an in-depth analysis of the interviews. Units of meaningful descriptions were classified into various main categories. The categories were determined by making small changes after each interview.
Results
Three of the 5 women refused to undergo amniocentesis and 2 agreed to it. As regards the process of decision making about whether to go through with the birth or have an abortion, four key categories to be pondered by the pregnant women were identified. These are as follows: 1) ask yourself whether to go ahead with the birth or not, 2) confirm your own sense of value about abortion, 3) judge your own opinion by comparing with that of others, 4) envisage what rearing a disabled infant would be like.
The starting point of the process is that pregnant women ask yourself whether to go ahead with the birth or not. The process is not one-way to the determination. While the women are wavering mentally about whether or not to continue the pregnancy, they consider the ramifications of these four categories.
Conclusion
The results suggest that this process of mental reflection and wavering over a period of time before the final decision is made is extremely important as it alleviates the pregnant woman's emotional conflict.
The pregnant women feel wavering when they have the clash of their sense of values and their emotion. And an important matter is affirms the pregnant woman's emotional conflict and their sense of values.
