What are you looking at immediately above? It is a picture of a womb holding a 21-week-old unborn baby named Samuel Alexander Armas, who is being operated on by surgeon Joseph Bruner at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. The baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and would not survive if removed from his mother’s womb. Little Samuel’s mother, Julie Armas, is an obstetrics nurse in Atlanta who knew of Dr. Bruner’s remarkable surgical procedure where he performs these special operations while the baby is still in the womb. During the procedure, the doctor…
…removes the uterus via C-section and makes a small incision to operate on the baby. As Dr. Bruner completed the surgery on Samuel, the little guy reached his tiny, fully developed hand through the incision and firmly grasped the surgeon’s finger. Dr. Bruner was reported as saying that when his finger was grasped, it was the most emotional moment of his life, and that for an instant he was just frozen, totally immobile. The photograph captures this amazing event with perfect clarity. The editors titled the picture, “Hand of Hope.” The text explaining the picture begins, “The tiny hand of 21-week-old fetus Samuel Alexander Armas emerges from the mother’s uterus to grasp the finger of Dr. Joseph Bruner, as if thanking the doctor for the gift of life.”
Little Samuel’s mother said they “wept for days” when they saw the picture. She said, “The photo reminds us pregnancy isn’t about disability or an illness, it’s about a little person.” Samuel was born in perfect health. The operation was 100% successful.