John Irving brings element of his own childhood into The Cider House Rules. Having lost his dad during WWII, Irving knows firsthand how difficult it is to grow up missing a parent. In this novel, he explores the concept of unwanted children. Dr. Wilbur Larch runs St. Cloud's Orphanage and an OBGYN practice for impoverished women. On the side he discretely performs abortions for some of them. When he is found out by one of the orphans -- Homer, -- Larch defends his decision passionately out of concern for the women who would seek abortions in dangerous backdoor clinics otherwise. Homer grows up to face his own parenting challenges. He meets a couple at Larch's clinic who invite him to move in with them. After Wally goes to war and is reported killed, Candy and Homer have a baby together. Suddenly Wally returns, having been paralyzed but not killed, and the illicit lovers tell him the baby -- Angel -- is his. Secretly they keep up their affair for fifteen years. Meanwhile Angel grows up and gets his girlfriend knocked up. They wind up at Homer's door seeking an abortion, he having long ago took over Dr. Larch's practice.
With its many twists and turns this story proves challenging to unpack. Irving is definitely shedding light on the crisis of unwanted children from all angles: orphans, abortions, and abandoned children. While Dr. Larch prefers that women keep their children, he understands that some of them do not have the resources or capacity to do so. He would rather they get a safe abortion from him than to attempt an unsanctioned one and potentially die but inevitably suffer trauma. He's got his own dark past in which he was assaulted by a prostitute when he was young, so he's not stranger to sexual trauma. That's why he opened the clinic. Desiring to ensure that no child grows up feeling undesirable, he runs the orphanage out of love but detachment. When Homer learns about the abortion practice, he is outraged and confused. Any one of those lost babies could've easily been him, so why was he spared? Without any consistent parental figures, he wanders through life trying to dull this question in the back of his mind. Finally, when his own commitment to parenting is challenged, he chooses to avoid conflict and give Angel to Wally without a word. He doesn't want to be a parent under the difficult and expensive circumstance of a custody lawsuit. This crisis brings him back to Dr. Larch; he's able to better understand his mentor's decision to perform abortions now. He finally sees that the women at the clinic don't want to be there, but they are desperate, just like he was in Angel's situation. The circle is completed when Angel shows up to Homer's clinic with his pregnant girlfriend seeking an abortion.
What does a society do with its unwanted children? It's a conversation long contested because of its complexity. The issue cannot be boiled down to mere value of life since it's often a competition between two lives -- mother and child. In his roundabout manner, Irving is discussing the options a parent has when they find themselves unfit for their role. He makes some powerful arguments for the legitimacy of abortion, without stomping on the opposition. Overall, Irving clearly communicates his deep conviction that children should never be made to feel unwanted.
