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Thursday April 5, 2007
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Popular TV show House Shows Unborn Child Grabbing Doc's Finger - Must See YouTube Clip
Riveting section considered to be one of television’s most memorable moments
By Hilary White
April 5, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A dramatic episode of the popular evening television drama, House, that shows an unborn child, from an opened womb, grasping a surgeon’s finger during surgery, has led to flood of Internet chatter.
The screenplay presents a 42 year-old, pregnant rock and roll photographer who suffers a stroke. Doctors discover the cause is a rare condition called Maternal Mirror Syndrome, in which the mother’s health mimics the distress level of her unborn child. The baby’s kidneys are failing, a situation that is likely to end in the death of both mother and child.
The diagnostician recommends abortion, steadfastly refusing to consider the unborn child a person and insisting on calling him a “fetus”, but the mother, Emma, adamantly refuses to consent. Emma begins to suffer life-threatening symptoms including jaundice and liver failure but she continues to refuse to abort and her child is two weeks away from viability.
Emma’s determination to save the life of her child convinces the doctor to try a revolutionary surgery in which the uterus is carefully removed from the mother, opened and the child treated and returned to the womb.
During the course of this delicate surgery the famously unemotional and sardonic doctor stands transfixed as the child reaches out of the uterus and grasps his finger with a tiny hand.
The story has veteran British actor, comedian and musician Hugh Laurie in the title role as the brilliant but drug addicted and nihilistic diagnostician Dr. Gregory House. Called “Fetal Position”, the episode aired Tuesday evening and has been the subject of much internet chatter about the personhood of the unborn.
Many pro-life viewers are likely aware that the surgery depicted, and the riveting moment of contact between the child and the doctor, is a re-enactment of a real life surgery that saved the life of Samuel Armas, whose spina bifida was repaired by doctors at Nashville 's Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 1999. The photo of Samuel’s tiny hand grasping his doctor’s finger has become an icon of the human nature of the unborn.
On House, the doctor, while moved, remains unconvinced by his unexpected contact, but pro-life advocates are hailing the episode’s depiction of the unborn child as a patient as a step forward in the media’s depiction of the right to life issue. Numerous online chatroom comments and viewer editorials concur that the child reaching out and grasping the doctor’s finger is one of TV’s most memorable moments.
The episode will re-air tonight on the Fox network.
View the moment on youtube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jzZLkNidWZ8
See the original Baby Samuel
http://www.lifesite.net/fetaldevelopment/samuel.html
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