The Hand of Hope
Nadine Dorries shares the story
This picture show a pregnant uterus laying on the exterior of the mother’s abdomen, having been lifted out of her abdominal cavity, via a c-section incision made in the abdominal wall.
Dr Joseph Bruner performed this procedure in order to operate on the baby whilst still in utero before it was born. The baby had spina bifida and would not have survived if removed from his mother’s womb.
When the operation was over, baby Samuel, at 21 weeks gestation, put his hand through the incision in the uterus and grabbed hold of the surgeon’s finger, a gesture which was apparently met with a huge amount of emotion in the operating theatre.
Dr Bruner said that it was the most emotional moment of his life and that for a moment he was just frozen, totally immobile.
In the UK we are aborting babies just like this and older every single day.
There are union funded organisations such as ‘Voice for Choice’ that campaign and fight to maintain the right to abort babies like Samuel.
There are organisations such as the BMA who vote and endorse the right to continue to do this.
There are organisations which are paid for by the government, such as BPAS, who argue the right to keep aborting babies Samuel’s age and older.
Little Samuel made his case from within the womb in a way which none of the shrill late abortionists will ever manage.
There are two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)
One would have to be inhuman to be unmoved by this story, and by the picture of baby Samuel’s tiny hand grasping the surgeon’s finger.
The Alive and Kicking campaign is still going strong – the petition has so far collected over 15,000 signatures.
http://www.aliveandkickingcampaign.org/petition/
The photo is real enough; the accompanying explanation is not, and has been denied by Dr Bruner himself. Both mother and baby/foetus (take your pick, depending on your politics) were anaesthetized and unable to move. The hand did not reach out for Bruner; it “flopped out”, and Bruner was photographed replacing it.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/thehand.asp
(Google around – there’s plenty more to corroborate this.)
Unfortunately, urban legends like this become the basis for statements such as “Little Samuel made his case from within the womb in a way which none of the shrill late abortionists will ever manage,” and “One would have to be inhuman to be unmoved by this story, and by the picture of baby Samuel’s tiny hand grasping the surgeon’s finger.”
This kind of emotional manipulation only makes the pro-life cause look silly and hollow.
I don’t think it’s emotional manipulation to present babies as though they were babies instead of lumps of flesh.
I take your point about the Snopes report. However, I think past the hype the point still remains – Samuel was a living human being at 21 weeks and to have terminated him would have been murder. The fact that he was anaesthetized during the operation has no bearing on that.
Emotional manipulation? What on earth are you talking about, Dave? This baby has a tiny hand, whether anaesthetised or not. I am horrified that people can think of perfectly formed but unborn babies as being unworthy of life.
This wicked practice has to stop. I have just read that 1,300 women in the UK have had FIVE abortions, and hundreds more have had even more than that. Peter is right, it is murder, pure and simple.
The emotional manipulation is in the story, which you specifically said you would have to be inhuman to be unmoved by. If a story is told with the intention of moving people, how is that NOT emotional manipulation if the story turns out to be fabricated?
By all means rely on the TRUTH to convince people that abortion is wrong, tragic, murder etc, but relying on a myth can only ever be manipulation. What is the point of all those extra details, all of which appear to be factually incorrect – the baby “grabbed” the surgeon’s finger, there was a “huge amount of emotion” in the operating theatre, the doctor was “frozen” and called it “the most emotional moment of his life” – if not to convince people on a purely emotional level? Emotional manipulation.
Reasoned arguments will go a much longer towards convincing people than made-up glurge.
The ‘reasoned arguments’ have in the past been that the baby feels no pain, that the mother will not suffer, that it is just a ‘blob’ – all things to convince people that the foetus is less than human. That is where the lies and manipulation are. We now know better, thanks to vastly improved technology. The truth is that a 21 week foetus is a viable human life, that it does have tiny hands, that it is a real human being. THAT is the truth.
I don’t believe the surgeon felt no emotion. That doesn’t make him unprofessional, it just makes him human. There is something wrong with people who don’t feel emotion. I wouldn’t want one operating on me. I have had miscarriages so I know the grief a mother feels at this loss; it cannot be escaped. I have also had live births so I know the joy shared by the whole of the medical team when a baby is born, no matter how many times they have seen it before.
If seeing this picture and reading this article makes some people think twice about abortion, good. Let’s have more of them.