From the Snopes article:
“It has become an urban legend,” says Bruner, the Vanderbilt University surgeon who fixed the spina bifida lesion on Samuel. Many people he hears from wonder whether it’s a fake.
“One person said the photo had been reviewed by a team of medical experts and they had determined that it was a hoax,” Bruner says with a laugh.
More commonly, people want to know how the photo came to be.
Some opponents of abortion have claimed that the baby reached through the womb and grabbed the doctor’s hand.
Not true, Bruner says.
Samuel and his mother, Julie, were under anesthesia and could not move.
“The baby did not reach out,” Bruner says. “The baby was anesthetized. The baby was not aware of what was going on.”3
