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Wednesday 12 August 2015

They Just Don't Get It, They Don't Understand What "Pro-Life" Means

Watched a movie yesterday, I'd been vaguely interested in it when it came out a number of years ago, but never gotten around to it.
It was a four-boxes-of-kleenex tear-jerker, a bit manipulative - how could it not be? it was about a dying girl, and her sister who had been genetically engineered, no, that's not fair, designed? well, chosen, presumably from a group of sibling embryos all the rest of which were disposed of, to be grown for spare parts a "savior sibling" for the sick child.
The younger child was suing her parents for emancipation rather than be forced, or at least coerced into donating a kidney.

As is my wont, I did a little research afterwards, what else have I seen him in? what's the source material? what did the critics think of this?

That last has always been of interest to me, how was a work received by those whose business, whose life's work it is to judge a work of entertainment or art?
This fascinates me even more in the past year, trying to fathom how mass delusion, even psychosis, seems to sometimes take hold of the world of film criticism as a whole.

Because, Boyhood.

(Twelve years to shoot it? Watching it felt like twelve years of my life I'll never get back.)

I digress.
So, I'm readin a few reviews...
The late Roger Ebert was one of the few top critics who thought well of My Sister's Keeper.
But this really threw me for a loop -
Although “My Brother’s Keeper,” ... is an effective tearjerker, if you think about it, it’s something else. The movie never says so, but it’s a practical parable about the debate between pro-choice and pro-life. If you’re pro-life, you would require Anna to donate her kidney, although there is a chance she could die, and her sister doesn’t have a good prognosis. If you’re pro-choice, you would support Anna’s lawsuit.
No.
NO!
Not just "NO" but HELLLLLL NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

The Pro-Life movement is, above all, about the dignity of a human life, the dignity and rights of each individual life.
It is about fighting against the commodification of any one human person, even if it is that person's mother who is trying to usurp ownership.
Should the sibling want to help, to save the sister's life?
Perhaps.
Sacrifice is a momentous thing.
Sacrifice is a great good, a noble action.

But it is only sacrifice to give up what is truly your own to give. 
Nobody else should dare demand it of you, no one can lay claim to your body, nobody can "require" such a violation of your autonomy.
(And that includes your mother, regardless of on which end of her birth canal you currently are.)

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