Women without a partner can become single mothers by choice through the use of fertility treatments. In Belgium, the decision to accept a candidate single mother by choice rests with the fertility clinic's multidisciplinary team of fertility practitioners. As a result, the fertility practitioners fulfil a gatekeeping role. However, this can cause an intra-role conflict as the responsibility to select the best fitting candidates is at odds with the responsibility to help patients. In this

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... tive study, we examine how fertility practitioners cope with the strain resulting from intra-role conflict in the decision-making process regarding single motherhood by choice in Belgium. The findings showed that practitioners appear to mainly resort to problem-focused coping, by constructing a grassroots criteria list and by shifting their role from screening agent to counsellor. These results are based on ten open in-depth interviews with fertility practitioners employed in the multidisciplinary teams of fertility centers, using a reflexive interview lead.