Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran:

Yes, in the UK practice I mentioned earlier, if there is a fatal foetal malformation, it is very distressing for the parents to look at the baby gasping a few times and dying. We have counselling, repeated counselling and discuss it with them. If it is anencephaly, for example and there is no brain, just a little bit of tissue there or a major spinal defect where most of the organ systems will be paralysed and so forth, then we would offer that. If the mother says "No", that she does not want to have foeticide done and will take the consequences, then we say "Okay". We terminate the pregnancy and sometimes the baby might be alive. We just leave them there to really grieve with the baby and then we take it on. Many of the mothers, as Dr. Boylan mentioned earlier, want to do a registration, they want to have a funeral, to have a footprint of the baby taken and they like to remember that baby. Mother to mother, though, it varies quite a lot. There are some mothers who do not want to even look at the baby because they are worried that it might affect them and come back to them like a dream later on. We offer but if they do not want it, we do not force them.