Ethical Dilemmas In My Sisters Keeper By Sarah Fitzgerald

In the United States, there is a three percent chance that a woman will bear a child with a birth defect. Mothers face difficult questions after conceiving a child with special needs. Jodi Picoult addresses the ethical decisions faced when trying to save a child with leukemia. However, this precarious situation is magnified when Sarah Fitzgerald chooses to procreate a child for skeptical reasons. Ultimately, it is immoral to conceive one child for the sole purpose of acting as an organ donor for another child; consequently, some parents take desperate acts to save their children.

My Sisters Keeper takes place in Rhode Island over a time period of fourteen years. It is about a family with three children, and their oldest child is suffering from leukemia. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald face many difficulties with their sick child Kate, who is in critical condition, and if does not receive a kidney transplant she is bound to die. Kate’s parents volunteer themselves in order to save their child, but neither of them are a perfect match. The doctor hints to Kate’s parents that they can conceive a child to be a perfect match to save Kate from dying. Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald struggle with this decision, but finally agree that this is the right thing to do to save their dying child, although this might be ethically wrong.

Similarly to the novel, there are many recent sibling organ transplant cases that also struggle with whether or not it is a moral decision to conceive a child for the benefit of another. In the case of Elizabeth and Michael Hartmann, Elizabeth was ten years old dying from Fanconi anemia, when her little baby brother was created to save her. She received a bone marrow transplant from her perfectly genetically selected brother, whi...

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...en that reason better exist. Because once it’s gone, so are you” (Picoult 8). Anna knows that the only reason that she was born was to save Kate from dying, which makes her feel sad and unwanted. Although Anna was conceived for the sole purpose of helping Kate, she struggles with the idea that she will never be independent as long as her sister is alive. The position Anna’s parents were put in when deciding whether or not to create a genetic match for Kate was challenging, however, it was not necessarily right for them to make a child who would then be put in a difficult situation herself. Often times, people who are faced with the decision of whether or not they should create a child in order to save another child, they forget to look at the immoral and unethical aspects of the situation that will ultimately impact the younger child for the rest of his or her life.