Posted on 05/05/2008 2:10:49 PM PDT by rhema
One moment can change your life. That’s what Michael Clancy has discovered in the eight and a half years since he snapped the groundbreaking photo of an unborn baby clutching his doctor’s hand during fetal surgery.
Clancy is now a fervent pro-lifer, spreading the message that unborn babies are precious human beings and deserve protection. He will be a featured speaker at the upcoming NRL Convention in Washington, D.C., July 3–5.
“It was the earliest human interaction ever recorded,” Clancy told NRL News. “It proved that the child at 21 weeks in utero is a reactive human being.”
When he took the photo in August 1999, Clancy was a freelance photographer filming the fetal surgery procedure for USA Today. Unborn baby Samuel Armas had been diagnosed with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, which occur when the spinal column fails to fuse properly, leaving a lesion (or opening) that is highly susceptible to infection. Dr. Joseph Bruner and his team at Vanderbilt University were operating to close the lesion.
After the incision was made in mother Julie Armas’s abdomen, her uterus was removed and laid on her thighs. An opening was made in the uterus, and the surgeons were supposed to operate on Samuel without any part of his body emerging from inside.
However, as Clancy eloquently describes on his web site, www.michaelclancy.com, “out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one’s hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing.
“The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘The child reached out,’ I said. ‘Oh. They do that all the time,’ she responded.”
The amazing photograph of Samuel reaching out to his doctor appeared in USA Today and The Tennessean September 7, 1999. Although Clancy never sought notoriety, his work immediately caught the attention of the media and of people around the world.
Clancy was shocked, however, when fetal surgeon Joseph Bruner told USA Today in May 2000 that the photo did not show purposeful movement by Samuel. Bruner claimed that he saw the hand near the incision and he “reached over and picked it up. … The baby did not reach out. The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on.”
But Clancy posted on his web site the series of frames that depict the moment of contact between Samuel and Dr. Bruner, and they show that Samuel is moving his own hand, grasping the doctor.
“The doctor questioned my credibility,” Clancy told NRL News. “But Samuel punched out, and even damaged the surgical opening. That 21-week-old child reacted to the touch of his surgeon.”
Clancy went on to testify at a congressional hearing in 2003 along with then-three-year-old Samuel, who was born 15 weeks after his surgery. During the hearing, as reported in National Review, Sen. Sam Brownback pointed to a large copy of Clancy’s photo and asked Samuel who it was. “Baby Samuel,” he answered. Brownback then asked what was happening. “They fixed my boo-boo,” said Samuel.
Although he considers himself “shy,” Clancy agreed to speak at the annual banquet of a local crisis pregnancy center about two and a half years ago. After he spoke, “they gave me the first standing ovation I ever had,” Clancy recalled. “Afterwards, 20 to 30 people were lined up to speak with me, and told me I need to continue telling my story.”
Clancy listened to their advice, and is now telling people about his first-hand witness to the humanity of the unborn. He also encourages people to download the photo from his web site and distribute it far and wide.
“It changes one heart at a time, that’s what this picture does,” he said. “This is God’s work. This is the youngest interaction with a child inside the womb ever recorded. As long as it keeps being put where people can see it, it can save lives.”
What a beautiful thing! I am unashamedly tearing up here.
It's just a TV show. House is a fictional character who happens to be an asshole. That's part of his appeal.
"South Park" did a recent episode in which Cartman tries to persuade a pregnant Mexican girl to get an abortion, "just cheat that little critter in your belly out of life."
Clancy is full of it; a self-promoter with a persecution complex. The text on his website is mainly about his efforts to make money off his picture and whining about how Bruner’s differing description of the event ruined his photojournalism career. In the close-up pictures, it looks to me as if Bruner is just lifting the baby’s hand with his finger; no sign of gripping, even though reflexive gripping may well be normal at this stage of development. The baby’s hand is partially open at first, then closes most of the way; babies do that all the time with their hands, without any object to touch or grip. Every mother knows that babies are moving their limbs at this stage of pregnancy, and it little surprise that a limb would find it’s way out of a surgical incision in the uterus. And little surprise that a surgeon would put a finger under the little hand and gently lift it to have a look at it.
Bruner now works at a high risk perinatology center affiliated with Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville. OB/GYNs who handle high risk pregnancies are frequent targets of lawsuits and threatened lawsuits, and it’s standard practice for their attorneys and malpractice insurers to advise them not to publicly discuss pending or threatened legal actions (and in the case of insurers, it would be a condition of continued coverage). It’s also standard practice for hospitals (and many other types of employers) to prohibit employees from discussing controversial matters. With Clancy howling about how Bruner ruined his journalism career, it’s hardly surprising that Clancy would be under instructions from various parties not to discuss the matter.
Bruner has made a career of performing very innovative and risky surgery, in an attempt to help babies who have gotten off to a very bad start in life, even before birth. Some idiot photographer claiming to be on a mission from God, trying to sensationalize Bruner’s work as some sort of political bombshell, and trying to make money out of it too, is just disgusting. From his own website: “I have become obsessed with proving to the world that I did capture the earliest interaction ever recorded.” Me, me, me, me. And then: “After testifying before the Senate Committee hearing in Sept. 2003. I would not put a congressional inquiry into Samuel’s surgery completely out of the realm of possibility. Film holds multitudes of information.” Delusions of self-importance.
BTTT in honor of my 6 week old grandaughter...
Of course it’s a TV show. Of course it’s fiction, but the point is that a major TV program chose to depict a reenactment of the famous unborn baby reaching out of mother’s womb photo shot. It beats the heck out of the all the pandering the TV shows do to draw attention to liberal causes.
He’s actually been here for 10 years now :) and his personality is that of a very curious child.
I can say that I’ve never forgotten the sight of that tiny hand and my belief that it revealed a personality trait even at that very young age.
I used to think that Ayn Rand had it right with the “tabula rasa” idea of babies development, but after Simon came along I realized she hadn’t a clue about babies. Other things, yes.
10 years later we’re still amazed over it - a most unanticipated memory of his babyhood.
Agree- Ayn Rand had an amazing insight and a brilliant ability to express her thoughts, into some very specific areas of human nature. At the same time, she was completely clueless and wilfully ignorant about others. Kind of an idiot-savant phenomenon.
10/31/2003 6:53:55 PM PST · 189,569+ views
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1012548/posts
Pro-Life PING
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[Whether he’s self-absorbed or not, he’s raised some questions on his blog site — one’s quoted below — that ought to be answered.]
Janelle,
Thank you for your question. If Dr. Bruner were to admit that Samuel came out from under the anesthesia too soon, every open fetal surgery program in the world would come under scrutiny. Samuel endangered his life, and his mother’s life when he reached from the womb. If you look at the surgical opening to the uterus in my picture, to the right above Samuel’s hand, the opening has perfect edges. The opening is made with an instrument that carterizes as it cuts. It is supposed to be a relatively bloodless procedure. Above Samuel’s hand to the left, the opening was clearly damaged when Samuel reached out, resulting in the stream of blood. Look at the Life Magazine pic: http://www.life.com/Life/eisies/eisies2000/scienceSingle_blowup.html
Perfect edges.
Dr. Bruner I’m sure has endured immeasurable scrutiny because he allowed a newspaper photographer into his operating room in the first place. No other doctor involved in open fetal surgery has allowed media into the surgical suite. This procedure is now under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Health in what is called the MOM’S Clinical Research Trials and absolutely no photographers are allowed to photograph another procedure, ever. And …….. very important! No medical personnel involved in Maternal Fetal Surgery to correct spina bifida can give an interview to a member of the media.
Regarding fetal pain: “H.R. 25 will soon become law in Louisiana. The law requires abortion practitioners to offer the mother a chance to give the baby anesthesia. It applies to any abortions done after 20 weeks of pregnancy, where studies are conclusive that an abortion baby has the capacity to experience pain.”
Samuel did not receive any anesthesia directly for this procedure. What anesthesia he did receive was from his mother being under general anesthesia. I am not a doctor, but as a witness Samuel was under anesthesia and simply came out from under it too soon. I do believe from the way his fist came flying out and flailed back and forth that he was experiencing pain.
I can’t address the doctor’s guilt for performing abortions. I’m sure the pro-abortion crowd isn’t too happy with him for, again, allowing a photographer into his operating room.
Planned Parenthood's website which amazingly opened right away!
You may want to reconsider your employment situation.
Fiction - and the arts in general - can help change hearts and minds. I get a lot of good response from “A Dream A Lot Like Mine” at http://www.myspace.com/emmettgrayson. There’s a movie-type story tha goes with the whole thing which I hope someday will be made. Give it a click and tell me if you like it.
Liberals love to use “science” to their advantage when it suits them (ex. the scientific “concensus” on global warming). In my discussions with liberals on abortion, I point out that the unborn child’s dna is different than the mother’s DNA and is therefore a separate human being. It is as if God has guided us to discover DNA as a clue on how he created everything and a hint that the unborn child is a separate person. Just “check the DNA”...
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