Exploring The Boundaries - Jodi Picoult’s Literary Investigations into Bioethics and Biolaw

The increasing progress in biotechnologies has paved the way to brandnew challenges to basic notions defining our human existence. The meddling of technology with matters of life and death has led to the emergence of new forms of “liminal beings” and to the subsequent crisis of their personhood, in moral and legal terms. Literature offers the opportunity to investigate the impacts on human life stemming from scientific potentialities and pretensions. Within the body of literary works dealing with bioethical and bio-legal issues, two novels of the contemporary American writer, Jodi Picoult, are scrutinised in detail. In the selected works, the author delves into the topics of bioengineering and “savior siblings” (My Sister’s Keeper, 2004) and into the context of end-of-life decision-making (Mercy, 1996). Her narrative example significantly deepens the dialogues interlinking literature, bioethics and biolaw.