Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
April 2000 – For almost 30 years this nation has authorized the killing of unborn children, and the slaughter is frequently justified by pro-abortion advocates. A comparison of two recent films from Disney subsidiary Miramax Films shows that we are spoonfeeding our young a toxic gruel which rejects the value of innocent life.
In one respect, the movies, Scream 3 and The Cider House Rules, could not be more different. Scream 3 is the final film of a terror trilogy, which single-handedly revived the slasher horror genre. The Cider House Rules, on the other hand, is a critically acclaimed film nominated for numerous Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
Viewers might be surprised which movie goes further in diminishing the value of human life.
Championing abortion
Based on the John Irving novel of the same name, The Cider House Rules is an often poignant tale about an orphanage in fictitious St. Cloud, Maine, during World War II. The story focuses on Dr. Wilbur Larch, who cares for the children, and Homer Wells, the young man he has raised to help him.
At the orphanage, Larch often delivers babies who are then put into the care of the orphanage staff. The doctor also frequently performs abortions and dumps the dead babies into an outside incinerator.
The movie presents a clear, one-sided argument in favor of abortion. This is no surprise, since Irving intended such a message for his book, and was pleased to see the same message faithfully replicated in the film. In the novel, Larch says that abortion is as much “the Lord’s work” as delivering babies.
Enamored with the potential power of the movie to change people’s minds to a pro-abortion position, Irving has gone so far as to suggest that the two groups of people that most need to see The Cider House Rules are pro-life politicians “and 12-year-old girls.”
It is the bold pro-abortion message of The Cider House Rules that ties this film to Scream 3. These two seemingly different films actually share a common bond – the symbolic and very real power of the knife. Whether it is the menacing six-inch blade in the hand of Scream’s psychopathic serial killer, or the almost innocent-looking curette in the skilled hand of the zealous abortionist Larch, the knife is an instrument of execution.
Judge, jury, and executioner
In Scream 3, the maniacal killer confronts the heroine, raving about past injustices. Without even a pretense of remorse, he admits that he kills to settle old scores, and believes himself right to do so.
Likewise, in The Cider House Rules, Larch demonstrates no regret for the abortions he performs, and, in fact, the doctor is an unabashed evangelist for his trade.
Yet, frustrated like a father who cannot convince his son to take over the family business, Larch cannot convert Homer on this one subject. The young man has been trained by Larch as a protege. He has learned and performed every other skill as a doctor, but refuses to do abortions.
To the doctor, it is a tragedy for women to risk their lives by getting back-alley abortions, and equally tragic for children to be born unwanted. When Homer argues that a fate worse than not being adopted would be to end up in the incinerator, Larch asks, “Happy to be alive under any circumstances? Is that your point?” It is clear that the abortionist believes that an unborn baby’s life is sometimes not worth saving, because in his opinion that child’s life would not be worth living.
It is precisely this message that makes The Cider House Rules a more morally dangerous film than Scream 3 – which at least does not portray a victim’s life as not being worth living.
The abortionist as hero
This is not to suggest that Larch is a psychopath, like the killer in Scream 3. Nevertheless, Larch is a criminal, for he performs his trade during the 1940s, when abortion illegal. This is but a mere technicality for The Cider House Rules, however. After all, the doctor has his reasons, and in his mind those reasons supercede the laws of the land.
Still, Larch breaks the law by taking innocent lives, just as the serial killer does in Scream 3. It is a point missed, perhaps, by the producers of both films. Once a man nullifies God’s laws, he can with impunity nullify man’s.
Rather than being portrayed as a criminal, though, Larch is portrayed as a hero. In a country where women have coathanger abortions and sentimental young fools like Homer refuse to prevent such tragedies, Larch is a nobleman among the ignorant peasantry.
The abortionist is a hero because he is willing to meet an important need – and as Larch continually tells Homer, “you have to be of use” in this world. This is why Larch fumes continually over Homer’s refusal to perform abortions. In the doctor’s mind, Homer is unwilling to take responsibility for the countless women who need the procedure. Even later, when he gives Homer a “useful” birthday present – a medical bag containing the instruments of the abortionist’s trade – the young man still does not relent.
The cider house rules
Larch’s frustration only grows when Homer decides to leave St. Cloud in order to “see the world.” Opportunity comes when Lt. Wally Worthington, a young pilot, brings his pregnant girlfriend Candy to the orphanage for an abortion. Homer asks Wally if he can leave with them, and the lieutenant invites him to work at his family’s apple orchard.
Homer happily works beside the migrant apple pickers who harvest the Worthingtons’ crops, under the direction of the foreman, Mr. Rose. Homer rooms with the workers in the “cider house” – which is little more than a large bunkhouse attached to the area where cider is made.
Like life itself, existence in the cider house is governed by rules. A typed list is tacked to the bunkhouse wall containing a succinct list of simple regulations – like no smoking in bed, and no climbing on the roof to eat lunch or sleep.
The rules are inadvertently ignored because the migrant workers cannot read. When Mr. Rose’s daughter Rose asks Homer to read the rules aloud, ignorance of the rules gives way to rebellion.
“Someone who don’t live here made those rules,” Mr. Rose says. Instead, the rules should be made by the ones who “live in this cider house” – those who grind up the apples, make the cider and “clean up all this mess.”
“These rules ain’t for us,” he says. “We the ones supposed to make our own rules. And we do. Every single day.”
With that the rules are pulled off the wall and burned in the stove.
The point is not very subtle, and goes right to the heart of the film’s message about abortion. In this world, man needs not consult with God about how he should live – presumably because God “don’t live here.” It is the occupants of the cider house – the humans living on planet earth – who have the right to decide which rules will be obeyed. Consequently, man will decide who lives and who dies.
This dispensing with God – and His irritating rules – is seen as a necessary step in becoming a “useful” adult in this life. This growing up process is evident in The Cider House Rules when Homer Wells finally changes his mind about abortion.
The young man discovers that a distraught Rose is pregnant by her father. Mr. Rose will not allow his daughter to leave, even when Homer makes clear that there is an abortionist who can help at St. Cloud.
It is now time for Homer to grow up and face his responsibility. With Rose’s distressing circumstances forging inescapable chains for the young woman, Homer tells Rose that he is “a doctor…I can help.” The abortionist’s tools, given by Larch to Homer, can finally be put to use.
Murder as sacred act
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Homer’s transformation is the choice of words he uses to offer his skills to Rose. Rather than speak the unvarnished truth by saying, “I can kill your baby for you,” Homer says, “I can help.”
These words, of course, perform a bit of moral sleight-of-hand. The truly wicked core of this film’s message is that the butchery performed by the abortionist is an act of beneficence. Abortion becomes a noble endeavor. The wickedness of murder has been transformed into a sacred act, and the sacred act of defending the innocent becomes iniquity. In Larch’s mind, it is much more of a sin not to kill the unwanted, unborn child, than to kill.
Only a devil could conceive of an ethic which insists that society spare children misery by killing them. Such logic, of course, is happily dreamt of in the minds of those who wield the butcher’s knife, rather than in the minds of those who find themselves under it.
Last stop: the furnace
Nothing presents a starker contrast between the Judeo-Christian worldview and nihilism, its modern-day competitor, than the furnace in The Cider House Rules. The final stop for the dismembered remains of unwanted babies, the incinerator stands outside the orphanage like a ghastly sentinel of the grave.
How can the symbolism of that furnace be missed by the pro-abortion crowd swooning to embrace this film? The abortionist Larch is carrying out his trade during World War II – at precisely the same time that, half a world away, another butcher is carrying out his work. There, too, furnaces were being stoked with victims.
That is why it is such tricky business, this overthrowing of the cider house rules. Once the intrinsic, God-ordained value of innocent human life has been stripped away, man is free to begin the process of re-categorizing people into valuable and nonvaluable. Who will be tossed into the latter bin? It’s been done before – with Native Americans, slaves, and Jews – and it is done now with unborn children.
It is ironic, of course, that the furnace stands near the orphanage. Inside the walls of one are burned the remains of children prematurely cut loose from life. Inside the walls of the other are young lives that were spared the curette’s razor edge, nourished by caring, compassionate adults.
Nightly at the orphanage, Larch sends the children off to sleep with a simple benediction: “Good night, you princes of Maine, you kings of New England.” The children, abandoned by some, are now cared for by others. The children have intrinsic worth, and the love shown to them at the orphanage – albeit in a run-down home with very few amenities – clearly teaches the Scriptural truth: We are, in fact, our “brother’s keeper” (Genesis 4:9).
Love and compassion for the unwanted is the answer, not the incinerator. We must avoid the sin of Cain, who slew his brother Abel. Innocent life is not ours to take. Even if that innocent life abides within a
mother's womb. 
