Cider House Rules: Review

I've been postponing watching this movie, knowing ahead of time that I'd be disgusted by its promotion of abortion. I've also suspected that it would be historically-revisionist. It irks me incredibly when people can't face up to the truth about history, and need to create false caricatures in order to buttress their own position.

Anyway, I'm watching it as I write - "Homer" is just about to perform his first abortion - but I'm ahead of myself. The plot is that an abortion-performing, orphanage-running, doctor raises one particular boy to follow in his medical footsteps. This boy, "Homer", doesn't want anything to do with abortion, but doesn't take particular offence to "Dr. Larch's" performance of them. This, despite the fact that he carries the fetal remains to the incinerator. Homer eventually leaves the orphanage, to discover a wider world, but also ostensibly to escape his destiny. The movie takes its name from a list of rules posted on the wall in a cider house - the workers can't read the rules, and didn't make the list - they see no point in following the rules for this reason. The lead black character is over-doing the not-following-rules-we-didn't-make bit right now, just in case viewers didn't catch the sledgehammer allusion. Oops, Homer just burned the list of rules, apparently signifying his acceptance of his 'gift' of performing abortions.

A few particulars: many abortionists today do their work for great financial gain - from the movie, you'd think that abortionists should be canonized for their selfless concern for women in need; there are many documented cases of abortionists today who have butchered women coming to them for legal abortions, and because the abortion industry fights any kind of regulation, these abortionists are untouchable; the black girl Homer aborts is apparently pregnant due to her own father, who is eventually able to quietly stand by and support his daughter as she gets an abortion - as I've written about before, a woman in the situation of incest, paradoxically, often desires to become pregnant, because it forces people around her to acknowledge the abuse she's undergoing - on the other hand, it's probably not that unusual for a man committing incest to desire abortion to protect his crime.

On the whole, it's as I expected - people involved with abortion are portrayed as selfless and realistic heroes. Those who oppose abortion as hopelessly idealistic. Abortion itself as a solution, when in fact it actually masks the problems that abortion revealed. Absolutely no mention, nor concern, for the unborn human being - an entity entirely ignored in this propaganda piece.