Despite the widespread use of prenatal screening, women's perceptions and experiences of prenatal care have only recently been addressed in scientific research.1 Several studies show that perceptions of and participation in prenatal testing can be quite different among women of different ethnic, cultural and social backgrounds.2 3 Especially little is known about how Muslim women experience prenatal care in a Western society.4 Our aim was to examine how these experiences and perceptions differ from the experiences and perceptions of non-Muslim women in Flanders and Brussels in Belgium.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Muslim and non-Muslim women. The respondents for this qualitative study were recruited through the maternity departments of three university hospitals and one general hospital. The study was approved by …