In The Cider House Rules, novelist John Irving presents what he himself called a self-conscious adoption of the literary form of the Dickensian novel
with its multiplicity of characters, its narrative mass, its overt sense of sentimentality, and its generic interactions with such modes as the detective story -- as the forum for constructing the fictions that intentionally challenge his readers' value systems (David and Womack, p.
One of the central themes in this massive story centers on abortion -- its practice, its necessity, its justification, and its value underpinnings. This brief report will examine Irving's presentation of the "abortion debate" with respect to three characters in the novel, Dr. or St. Larch, Homer Wells, and Mrs. Eames. It will be argued that Irving positions two opposing views of abortion as held by Larch and Wells to identify the themes of the controversy over this medical practice, leaving the reader to decide which "side" as presented by these two physicians is most appropriate.
Dr. Larch, later known as St. Larch, embarks on a career of abortion after encountering a prostitute (Mrs. Eames) which whom he had his own first sexual encounter. Mrs. Eames re-enters Larch's world when he is serving as a resident at the South End Branch of the Boston Lying-In Hospital. Mrs. Eames has taken an aborticide that has left her internal organs in a fragile and tenuous state. Six days after entering into Larch's care, she dies. Larch learns from her daughter (who witnesses his post-coital slumbers when he slept with her mother) that Mrs. Eames had taken a "French Lunar Solution" said to restore "Female Monthly Regularity" (Irving, p. 57).
Larch is further challenged to refine and define his views on abortion by Mrs. Eames' daughter, who also demands an abortion, stating "I ain't quick! I ain't quick, I said" (Irving, p. 59). Though Larch hesitates, he finds this young woman beaten and near death ...