Samuel Armas is a lucky, lucky baby.  He has physical problems, but he was rescued from a proposed abortion by his loving parents and a surgeon who operated to correct his spina bifida before he was born.  The picture of his hand appeared on this website before he was born. 

Now his mother says, "Samuel continues to thrive at 3 months of age. He is 12 pounds of smiling, cooing activity! His brain continues to appear normal on ultrasound. Though he has little movement of the feet and ankles, he is achieving all the appropriate developmental milestones."

Baby Samuel Photo Changes Family for Life

Atlanta -- Imagine the entire world got to see your baby pictures at the same moment you did. Imagine your baby wasn't yet born at the time.

When Julie and Alex Armas of Douglasville agreed to experimental surgery that might save their developing unborn child from a life-altering birth defect, they also agreed to have it documented. The photograph that resulted --- an image of their son Samuel, too young to survive outside the womb, reaching out from Julie's uterus and touching his surgeon's hand --- was reproduced around the globe.

Pro-life advocates claimed it as an icon, an unassailable critique of abortion. Medical ethicists pointed out that society had once again employed a medical technology before thinking through the implications. And hundreds of journalists called the Armases' phone number, sent them an e-mail or showed up at their door.

The Armases are both scientifically inclined --- she is a nurse, he an engineer --- and deeply religious. They wanted to publicize the surgery, and to illustrate an alternative to abortion, and they got their wish, many times over. The media storm has almost abated, giving them a chance to focus on the celebrity baby at its center: Samuel Alexander Armas, born Dec. 2, 1999.

They have come to terms --- for the most part --- with the furor their son's picture generated.

"I put this all up to the Lord," Julie said, in the Armases' first in-depth interview since the birth. "I believe God is using him, and he's going to continue to. And he'll work it out with us somehow."

Julie, now 28, and Alex Armas, 29, married young and planned on children. Two pregnancies ended in miscarriages. This time last year, Julie conceived again --- but in early July, an ultrasound revealed that the 15-week-old unborn child was afflicted with spina bifida.

The birth defect, in which the developing spine fails to close around the spinal cord, is relatively common but disabling: It can cause paralysis, incontinence and retardation. By some estimates, half of the unborn children in which spina bifida is detected during prenatal testing are aborted.

The Armases live in a modest subdivision 35 miles west of Atlanta, in a tan house with burgundy shutters whose door knocker reads, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15)." They belong to Pleasant Hill Baptist Church in Powder Springs, where they attend services twice on Sundays. They have prayed over every major decision in their six-year marriage. Abortion was not a possibility for them.

"When we found out she was pregnant, it was such a joyous occasion," Alex said. "We waited week after week, until we passed the point where she had the other miscarriages. And when we finally found out he had this problem, it was devastating."

They found, via the Internet, a team at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who have developed a technique for operating on unborn children in mid-pregnancy. After weeks of referral and screening, the physicians' group accepted the Armases as candidates for the operation. Julie was 21 weeks pregnant; the early fetal age meant a better chance of reversing skull deformities and hydrocephalus, an accumulation of fluid that presses on the brain. But it was so early that if Julie spontaneously delivered during the surgery, Samuel would not survive.

Simultaneously, the couple agreed to allow the procedure to be documented: USA Today had been preparing a story about the surgical team and wanted to observe them in action. When Julie was wheeled in for surgery last Aug. 19, a reporter and photographer were in the OR.

The surgery, a modified Caesarean section with the unborn child remaining in the womb, went smoothly. Dr. Noel Tulipan, Vanderbilt's director of pediatric neurosurgery, repaired Samuel's spine. Dr. Joseph Bruner, the surgeon leading the operation, began to close the opening in Julie's uterus. And then the anesthetized child shifted.

His thumbnail-sized hand flopped out of the incision. Bruner lifted it and tucked it back. The photographer clicked the shutter.

Julie, completely sedated, knew nothing of it; neither did Alex, alone in the recovery room, nor the church and family members in the waiting area. With the surgery successfully completed, the couple went home three days later - -- Julie on bed rest to keep Samuel inside as long as possible, Alex back to work at Delta Air Lines.

And on Sept. 7, the phone began to ring. The photograph, shot by freelancer Michael Clancy of Nashville, was inside USA Today.

"We had heard about it --- the surgical team had told us it was likely to be something special --- but we hadn't seen it," Alex said. Later that day, the couple saw the photo for the first time: the bloody edges of the incision, the deep-pink, perfectly round uterus, the gloved hands cradling the organ --- and at the center, a tiny fist resting on the surgeon's fingertip.

"It was amazing," Julie said. "It felt so good."

"He wasn't even born yet," Alex added. "But that was our baby; that was my boy."

Via electronic newswires, the story and image were reproduced worldwide, in papers and on Web sites. A reporter from a British tabloid knocked on the Armases' door; another besieged Alex at work. Radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger talked about the photo on her call-in show. Political gossip-monger Matt Drudge lost his Fox TV show in a dispute over using it.

Three months almost to the day after the photo appeared --- four weeks shy of his due date --- Samuel was born by Caesarean section. He is healthy, and turned 4 months old last Sunday.

The procedure used on Samuel is so technically demanding that only one other U.S. medical center, in Philadelphia, has made a specialty of it. The surgeons must operate, using specially designed tools, through an incision that is only several inches wide, on tissue that is extraordinarily fragile.

There is a constant possibility of inducing labor. That would not only interrupt the spinal repair, making the surgery pointless, but also cause the child to risk the brain damage, lung damage and potential blindness of extreme prematurity.

Samuel was the 54th unborn child operated on by the Vanderbilt team, out of 86 so far. Despite all that experience, the surgery "is terrifying," Bruner said, "for the parents, and terrifying for the surgery team as well, to know that you are literally holding the life of an [unborn child] in the balance."

To ease the strain, Bruner often talks to the unborn children while he works --- to soothe them and keep them quiet, and to let them know what is going on. Sometimes he conveys a message from the parents: We love you. We are trying our best to help.

"So I feel like I have developed a personal relationship with each of them," he said. "So when Samuel's hand appeared in the uterine opening, I impulsively reached out and lifted it. It was a very human thing to do, to reach out and take someone's hand."

Over his shoulder, Bruner heard the photographer's motordrive fire.

"When I saw the proof, I was astonished at what a powerful photograph it was," he said. "But even so, I was surprised by the media attention that it received."

Michael Clancy, who took the photograph, describes himself as "long- haired, with no college, from the wrong side of the tracks." A former carpenter who is passionate about photojournalism, the 43-year-old freelances for a living, and tries to keep his days free for the Tennessean, Nashville's main newspaper.

The Tennessean and USA Today belong to the same newspaper chain, Gannett Corp. On the day of Julie Armas' surgery, the national paper asked the local paper to send one of their staff photographers to the hospital. But the staff shooters were all busy, and Clancy was assigned instead.

The procedure took an hour and 13 minutes. Clancy shot nine rolls of film, an average of one frame every 15 seconds. In the middle of the ninth roll, "I was watching the uterus, and I saw it vibrate," he said. "And righ after that the hand came flying out, all the way to the elbow, and then pulled back. I held my breath and shot as fast as I could, and I squeezed off four shots before the doctor tucked it back."

He mailed off the undeveloped film that night, not knowing whether the shots he had grabbed were even in focus. He didn't see the results for almost three weeks, until a friend at the Tennessean pulled it off the company computer network a few days before the story was scheduled to run.

"My jaw dropped open. I couldn't say anything," Clancy recalled. "And my friend Sam said, 'That is a miraculous photo.' "

The photograph was interpreted almost immediately as a statement about abortion.

"Twenty-four hours after the picture ran, I got a call from a man in St. Louis, and right off he said, 'Mr. Clancy, I want you to know your picture is already saving babies' lives,' " Clancy said. "When I got off the phone, I just sort of sank to my knees. I didn't think I could ever do something so important."

Up to that point, Clancy, who has no children, had considered himself in favor of abortion rights. "And right now I still feel that I am pro-choice," he said. "But I think once a girl is pregnant, the choice is made. This made a pro-lifer out of me."

According to Clancy, USA Today paid him $225 plus expenses, his standard single-day rate. He retained rights to the image. He listed the photo with a press agency, asking $500 for each single use. So far, he said, he has earned $10,000, even though many Web sites have copied the image without paying.

Among those who have bought use of the photo: the National Right to Life Committee, which featured the image in its 400,000-circulation newsletter. "It is such an evocative image," said Laura Echevarria, spokeswoman for the pro-life organization. "We have so few opportunities to see inside the womb that people have a hard time imagining an unborn child as human. This puts a face, or rather a hand, to the child."

To medical ethicists, the clash over Samuel's surgery photo seems inevitable.

To Clancy, debates over the image's meaning are mere wordplay. "I don't take credit for the photo," he said. "I don't want to sound real Jesus or anything, but that's God's picture. It's a message."

At the tan house in Douglasville, where Mickey the Maine Coon cat has almost adjusted to being displaced as the family favorite, life has returned to normal --- or as normal as possible for first-time parents adjusting to a newborn.

The storm over the photograph has faded, and the surgery it depicts appears to have worked. Samuel has no signs of the misshapen skull that first alarmed the Armases' obstetrician last summer, and no apparent hydrocephalus, a common major complication. There may be some residual damage to nerves low on his spine; his parents suspect he is paralyzed below the knee, and his doctors predict he may struggle with bladder control.

"These are things you can live with," Alex said. "He should be able to walk with a lower leg brace. He may not be able to run fast or be a sports star. But knowing how bad it could have been, these things are minimal in terms of importance and priorities. He smiles, he picks his head up, he's almost turning over; he's doing everything a baby should be doing, and that is what we wanted."

Alex and Julie have begun to contemplate what they will tell Samuel about the risks they took and the inadvertent celebrity that resulted. "He was my baby, even before he was born, and being his parent it was up to me to make the best medical decision for him," Julie said. Despite their delight in Samuel, who has an alert dark gaze and a new trick of making bubbling noises, the pain and helplessness his diagnosis triggered is still fresh in their memories.

"When I woke up afterward, (Alex) said I asked 20 times if I was still pregnant," Julie said, tearing up at the memory. "That was my biggest fear: Waking up and finding Samuel gone. I had told Alex, if I delivered, to go and hold the baby, because his heart would be beating and he would live a little while, and I didn't want him to be alone."

In fact, things have gone surprisingly well. Spina bifida babies typically face five to six surgeries in their first year of life; Samuel so far has had one, for a hernia unrelated to the birth defect. The bill for his surgery and Julie's subsequent home monitoring, approximately $35,000, was completely paid by Aetna-U.S. Healthcare, their insurers --- after the couple turned down $10,000 to tell their story exclusively to a British paper.

The Armases have no control over the use of their son's before-birth photo, and little contact with Clancy, who visited Samuel in the hospital two days after he was born. They have told their story to a Christian online magazine, and periodically hear by e-mail of families dealing with a spina bifida diagnosis whom their story has influenced.

"From something so terrible to begin with, we never considered that a diagnosis like that could mean blessings," Alex said. "But the way things have worked out, the photograph is the least of this, as far as we are concerned. Our whole reason for deciding to agree to the photograph has been fulfilled on a larger scale than we could ever have dreamed. People have found out about the surgery, and we are happy with that."

Pro-Life Infonet 4/10/00 #2143  Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution, April, 8 2000

The Pro-Life Infonet is a daily compilation of pro-life news and information. To subscribe, send the message "subscribe" to: infonet-request@prolifeinfo.org. Infonet is sponsored by Women and Children First (http://www.prolifeinfo.org/wcf). For more pro-life info visit http://www.prolifeinfo.org and for questions or additional information email ertelt@prolifeinfo.org

To see more about Samuel, you can read the original story on the website that published it or the update.  You can enter your comments in the heartwarming guestlog that is kept on the same website.  Just read the guestlog if you want to feel warm and fuzzy for the rest of the day!

For an update and to see his picture.