Anna sits in her hospital bed, trying to bear the pain that has followed her long surgery. Meanwhile, her sick sister, Kate, with almost identical traits, sits in another room. Likewise, she is in pain, but she feels content that she now has an amazing organ that will help her live. Anna has just donated her kidney so Kate has a chance at living a longer life. The girls’ mother, Sara, believes it is right that Anna helps her sister by giving her what she needs like organs and bone marrow.
However, their mother does not realize that these surgeries are very vigorous and are hurting Anna’s body; she does not realize that Anna does not feel like she has the rights to her body anymore. In her novel, My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult exposes the lack of justice for minors in the American justice system while criticizing unethical parenting practices. Jodi Picoult introduces the idea of justice in America through Anna’s quest to gain individuality; her fight to become her own person is stopped by the process of stem cell therapy.
Anna wants to search for individuality because she is a donor for her sister Kate; she says, “When Kate needs leukocytes or stem cells…to fool her body into thinking it’s healthy, I’m the one who provides them” (Picoult 10). The only reason Anna is born is to be a donor for Kate, and her parents have made the decision that she has to be the donor whenever Kate needs something to make her leukemia better; she gives Kate stem cells and from time to time life-saving organs such as the kidney, an organ Anna needs to donate in order for Kate to live. Joseph Panno gives a further explanation of what stem cell therapy is and how it works:
Stem cell therapy is now a standard clinical procedure to treat all forms of leukemia with autologous transplants, thus removing the need to find bone marrow donors. Stem cells, isolated from the bone marrow of the affected patient, are induced to differentiate into white blood cell precursors and then grown in culture to increase their numbers. Once these cells are collected, the patient’s cancerous bone marrow is destroyed and the stem cell-derived blood cells are returned to the patient in order to reconstitute a healthy, cancer-free bone marrow. (100-101)
Panno explains how stem cells provide a form of life-saving treatment for cancer patients; when thinking of ways to treat Kate, the doctors had the same type of mindset and wanted to use stem cell therapy to save her life. Even though being a donor saves her sister’s life, Anna wants control over her own body; she explains she has to go through a large amount of stress to help her sister: “There is way too much to explain… The bruises and the deep bone ache after I gave up my marrow; the shots that sparked more stem cells in me, so that there’d be extra for my sister…The fact that the only reason I was born was as a harvest crop for Kate. (Picoult 18-19).
Being Kate’s organ donor annoys Anna, so she decides to ask for medical emancipation from her parents. The American justice system frowns upon emancipation, especially when a minor asks for the rights to his/her own body when instead they could be saving a sibling’s life. Throughout the novel, Anna states she wants the rights to her own body. The American justice system disproves of emancipation for a minor because he/she is too young to engage in adult activities such as owning property and in Anna’s case “consent[ing] to medical care” (Hempelman 79).
Anna wants medical emancipation so she does not have to go through the painful process of donating stem cells and organs to her sister. She also knows she was born a designer baby, a baby that is created with a specific genetic makeup to have particular characteristics, something that has become “an international controversy. Should anyone be created just to provide assistance to someone else…? ” (Hacht 259-260). Anna feels it is wrong that she is only alive just to be a donor for Kate, and she wants to gain freedom and have the rights to her body.
She knows she cannot control her family, so she seeks individuality through emancipation and “seeks control of her own destiny” (Hacht 257). Anna wants to prove her independence, something a minor needs to gain emancipation (Hempelman 78). However, the family court Anna sees does not think it is that easy for her to become medically emancipated. Judge Desalvo was a parent before his daughter died as a result of a drunk driver hitting her car, so he sees the viewpoint of Sara and Brian Fitzgerald, and thus persuades him to agree with them (Picoult 81).
This is unfair to Anna, a minor, because the adults involved in the court case, including her parents and Judge Desalvo obviously feel like they have more power than her; they think that Anna is just going through a phase that is causing her to have different thoughts about the decisions her parents have already made for her. Evidently, the American justice is unfair and biased against minors and the rights they wish to have.
Tensions between family members constantly occur in the novel My Sister’s Keeper. When Anna files a lawsuit against her parents, this creates a number of issues; Sara becomes infuriated with her daughter, Anna, because they are now going to be opposing sides in a court case (Picoult 54). It is obvious that filing a lawsuit creates problems between the people involved; it is clear in the novel that the lawsuit is a greater problem since it is between a thirteen-year-old girl and her parents.
A while after she files the lawsuit, Anna’s attorney, Campbell files a restraining order that separates Anna from her mother (Picoult 185). Campbell does this because he knows Sara will try to persuade Anna that she is not thinking right, and there is no reason for her to file a lawsuit for medical emancipation. In many family court situations, some family members are “not even charged with any legal wrongdoing”; but it is still horrific to see family members fighting against each other for something so serious (Ojeada 178).
The fact that a Anna is fighting against her parents reveals the amount of stress involved for all family members in family court; every family member is obviously involved: Kate is dying as Anna is fighting for medical emancipation, and Brian and Sara Fitzgerald are fighting to keep their daughter alive. Clearly, there is much uncertainty in the Fitzgeralds’ lives from Anna filing a lawsuit to Campbell filing a restraining order against Sara.
Brian Fitzgerald showcases strong parenting skills throughout the novel. Since Anna is not allowed to be near her mother, Brian allows Anna to sleep at the fire station until the trial is over and there is no longer a restraining order against Sara (Picoult 194). Brian wants Anna to have the best opportunity to escape the stress of being around her family and clear her mind; at the fire station, she is able to think about the trial in a setting that is not too overwhelming for her.
Brian also tries to understand Anna’s perspective on the entire situation and not see it from a parent’s perspective (Picoult 194). He tries to see where Anna is coming from instead of being upset at her for filing a lawsuit against him and Sara. Mr. Fitzgerald is undoubtedly an example of a father with exceptional parenting skills that help his daughter learn more about herself. On the contrary, Brian’s wife, Sara Fitzgerald, displays poor parenting practices that in no way help Anna grow.
According to Twenty-first-Century American Novelists, Picoult ponders over whether it is ethical or not to use DNA and other types of genetic therapies and she ponders, “If you use one of your children to save the life of another, are you being a good mother… or a very bad one? ” (Clark). Picoult uses this question when creating Sara’s beliefs and values in My Sister’s Keeper; she wanted the novel to be very controversial, and she does this by incorporating this striking question into the novel.
A separate source shares that Jodi Picoult’s son had a potentially fatal tumor in both ears, and “because of this experience, Picoult understands the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child and also how [the] needs of a sick child are demanding for the entire family” (Hacht 246-247). Picoult evidently understands where mothers like Sara are coming from; however there are some mothers that are totally naive to the fact that what they are doing is unethical.
Throughout the novel, Sara makes it clear that she “sees no ethical dilemmas, neither in how Anna was created nor in making Anna to try to keep Kate alive” (Hacht 257). She thinks it was the right decision to create Anna for the sole purpose of making sure Kate does not die. Picoult explains how this works: “Traditionally, parents make decisions for a child, because they are looking out for his or her best interests. But if they are blinded… by the best interest of another of their children, the system breaks down. And somewhere, underneath all the rubble, are casualties like Anna” (112).
As a parent with multiple children, it can be tough to treat each child equally by giving them the same amount of things; this is true, but it is not an excuse to treat one child with less respect, something Sara has done. Sara Fitzgerald is without doubt an example of an unsatisfactory parent that does not make the right decisions for all of her children to be successful. Jodi Picoult’s novel has made readers everywhere realize what goes on behind-the-scenes in a dysfunctional family like the Fitzgeralds. She has taken a controversial subject matter and personal experience to create a heartbreaking story.
My Sister’s Keeper makes readers of all ages recognize what separates a quality parent from a poor one in certain situations; it also exposes injustice and unfair treatment of minors in court. Controversial pieces like My Sister’s Keeper connect readers all over the world with a striking subject matter. Reading novels like this bring up debate over those controversial topics or bring people together by sharing similar thoughts and agreeing with them. Similar pieces of literature throughout time have drawn people together and the literature of today continues to do the same.