This TV movie is based on the life of Anissa Ayala, a leukemia patient whose parents conceived a child in hopes of creating a bone-marrow match that would save Anissa's life. Baby Marissa, born in 1990, became the focus of an ethical controversy: Was it proper to bring a child into the world primarily to help her sister? As the situation is played out here, the question verges on the ridiculous: Why not, when the Ayala family seems so loving and sincere? Everyone is uniformly sympathetic, and as a result, For the Love of my Child lacks drama. A cast of little-known actors-T — Teresa DiSpina as Anissa, Tony Perez as her father, and especially Priscilla Lopez as her mother — does a fine, restrained job in what could have been a standard-issue tearjerker. But the conflict in this film seems resolved all too easily. C+
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