Did Sara go to far in this ethically questionable movie? By Isabella TokichPicture here To go with review
Idea: Doctors all over anna stabbing out her kidney and kate is in back, black, watching her suffer, Sarah is next to her smiling
- shows Kate is dark on the inside
- anna forced to do something she doesn't want to do, sarah smiling shows kate rights seem more important then annas
My Sisters Keeper, based on Jodi Picoult book, poses the question: how much are we entitled to use each other? My Sister’s Keeper is a thought-provoking dramatisation of one of the most troubling ethical issues of the ART (artificial reproductive technology) industry: the creation of “saviour siblings”.
It all began with a bruise: a small innocent bruise. While bathing her two-year-old daughter, Sarah finds a trail of brown bruises running down Kate’s spine, before rushing to an oncologist. Kate’s childhood becomes a whirlwind of specialist appointments, emergency surgeries, and nauseating chemo-therapy sessions since this point, diagnosed with leukemia.
How far are they willing to go to save their little girl? How ethical will these decisions be?
The movie begins with a voice-over by Anna, the “savior sibling”. She knew she was made to rescue her sister. This made her feel second best. Being a savior child, meant that the doctors were able to manipulate Annas genes to make her the perfect match for her sister. While doing this, the doctors would have to create a number of embryos, tested them, and kept the one that matched. Then what happens to the others? They are destroyed. These discarded siblings are not part of the story. Somehow, they never are.
Anna had been Kate’s supply for bone marrow and blood transfusions since she came out of the womb. Now she is asked for something more: her kidney. After 13 years of being an involuntary donor, Anna seeks to obtain control over her own body, even at the cost of her sister’s life.
Anna hires a lawyer to represent her in a suit against her mother. She claims that she wants the rights to her own body, which legally, is extremely valid.
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Sarah is astounded by the lawsuit that her teenage daughter has filed against her parents. She has convinced herself that it is morally licit to create a human to force that human to save another. Her father Brian tries to keep up with shift work at the Fire Station, while the rest go his times are trying to put out the metaphorical fires in their household. Kate is sick and tired of being sick and the constant fighting in their family. Anna has had enough of feeling like a human blood bag. Their life is a continuous bash around between what is right for Anna, Kate, and their family as a whole.
Since Anna was created specifically to provide life-saving transplants and transfusions for her sister, was she being coerced and taken advantage of? Now that she’s old enough to know the risks of major surgery, does she have the right to refuse? After all, Anna would likely never have come into existence if it weren’t for her sister’s leukemia. The two sisters owe one another their lives.
Pro-lifers in terms of abortion are often asked whether women have a responsibility to give up her womb to sustain the life of their child. How does the womb differ from a kidney? Well, if Anna refused to give up her kidney, her sister Kate would die from kidney failure. Anna isn’t directly or intentionally killing her sister. If a woman were to electively refuse her baby the safety and sustenance of her womb, the baby would not only be cut off from her life support but would also be cut to pieces in the process. It’s the difference between not being able to save someone who’s drowning, and holding their head underwater.
As the story progresses, the viewer see that the parents really do love Anna. They do realise that she isn’t merely a bundle of spare parts, but a full human being. But the mother, in particular, really does believe she is entitled to direct the use of one daughter’s body for the benefit of the other daughter, although this, is ethically a step too far.
Only the sisters’ love for each other keeps the family from completely disintegrating. Kate wants Anna to live her best life, and is accepting that she must die so Anna can live her life to the fullest.
My Sister’s Keeper keeps this compelling moral question before our eyes, of how much are we entitled to use eachother, and if it is ethically acceptable to genetically modify a cell to create the perfect baby into this life, for medical purposes. It also brings up the question of why isn’t it even more acceptable to just eliminate non-useful embryos before implantation in the womb, which is not even touched on in the movie.
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