It was all the Lord's work to Dr. Larch
What can John Irving's Cider House Rules teach us about the Texas abortion bill
The summer before I started law school, I went through a John Irving phase. I was in the process of training for the 2019 Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon at the time, and found audiobooks to be the best distraction from the relentless beating that is a three hour Sunday run. Though completely unplanned, my reading (or listening if we’re going to be literal) The World According to Garp and Cider House Rules coincided with with not only the Jeffery Epstein expose, but also the the attempts to pass so-called “heartbeat bills”, which would have banned abortion after six-weeks in 11 states in 2019.
I have always been a believer in the importance of fiction, not just as a way to transport us temporarily from our daily lives, but also as a key part of understanding and analyzing the world we live in. When we talk about the fiction that changed our lives, I believe we are most often referring to those works of fiction that impact the way we understand or think about who we are and the world we live in.
At the time I was reading those books, the heartbeat bills were largely unsuccessful, being found unconstitutional under Roe v Wade. Two years later, many of the scenes and sentences from my John Irving phase remain present in my mind, now more than ever with the September 1, 2021 Supreme Court ruling in Whole Woman’s Health et al v Austin Reeve Jackson, Judge et al, allowing Texas’ most recent attempt to pass a heartbeat bill to go forward.
Texas bill, SB8, the “Texas Heartbeat Act”, came into effect on September 1, 2021. Unlike the 2019 bills, which banned abortions after six-weeks outright, SB8 says at section 171.204, “except as provided by section 171.205, a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child...or failed to perform a test to detect a fetal heartbeat”. The notion behind this provision is that a fetal heartbeat predicts viability. While this provision harkens back to the 2019 heartbeat bills, SB8 takes an important step further. Sections 171.207-171.208 shift the burden of enforcing the law from the state to individual citizens, empowering them to bring a civil action against any person who performs or induces, or aides and abets, an abortion after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Finally, SB8 at section 171.208(j) does not provide an exemption for the case of rape, sexual assault, or incest.
In his decision in Whole Woman’s Health, Justice Alito held that while the court was unable to resolve any substantive claim regarding the constitutionality of SB8 conclusively at this time, the party challenging the bill had failed to justify an injunction preventing it from coming into effect, as no State employees have the power to enforce SB8, and no private citizens had acted on it, or planned to act on it for September 1. Though Justice Alito concluded by saying that his decision did not limit other constitutional or procedural challenges to the bill, the law was able to come into effect, immediately impacting the lives of, most specifically, women and health care providers in Texas.
Watching what is happening in Texas, and the 10 others states that attempted to pass similar laws in 2019, feels like looking down the rabbit hole to a time that many of us hoped had come and gone.
John Irving’s 1985 novel Cider House Rules, takes place in exactly that time - St. Cloud’s, Maine from 1920-something to 1950-something. The novel deals with, among other things, the issues and history related to providing abortions in America long before Roe v Wade.
Throughout the novel there is a tension between Dr. Larch, an elderly doctor to whom women come to have “an orphan or an abortion”, and Homer Wells, an orphan and his protégé, who believes in, but does not want to perform, abortions. Though the novel hit the shelves over 35 years ago, and takes place long before that, many of the conversations between. Dr. Larch and Homer Wells ring true to the issues unfolding at this moment.
“These same people who tell us we must defend the lives of the unborn-they are the same people who seem not so interested in defending anyone but themselves after the accident of birth is complete! These same people who profess their love of the unborn's soul-they don't care to make much of a contribution to the poor, they don't care to offer much assistance to the unwanted or the oppressed! How do they justify such a concern for the fetus and such a lack of concern for unwanted and abused children? They condemn others for the accident of conception; they condemn the poor-as if the poor can help being poor. One way the poor could help themselves would be to be in control of the size of their families. I thought that freedom of choice was obviously democratic-was obviously American!” - John Irving, Cider House Rules
This quote reflects arguments that are heard just as much now as they were in 1985, and in the early 20th century regarding the debate around abortion, and the realities of restricting access to abortion.
The line about coming to have an “orphan or an abortion” is repeated over and over in the book. Thinking back, it strikes me that perhaps this is how we should be thinking about unwanted pregnancy and the realities of restricting access to abortion. Not every pregnancy is wanted, and not every pregnancy must be carried to term.
The question we frequently arrive at with the debate around the morality of abortion is, which matters more: being alive or living?
In her dissenting opinion in Whole Women’s Health, Justice Sotomayor highlighted the way that SB8 delegates the power to prevent women from obtaining an abortion in the first trimester to private individuals. She further highlights an update to Planned Parenthood South Texas’ website which states that it is no longer able offer abortions, and the sworn statements from smaller clinics explaining that they will have no option but to close their doors as they are unable to incur the financial, personal, and professional risks that are associated with waiting to be sued by a private individual at any moment.
Justice Sotomayor states plainly: “The very bringing into effect of Texas’ law may well threaten the applicants with imminent and serious harm”, a statement that is eerily similar to one in Cider House Rules:
“He had heard her say, so many times, that a society that approved of making abortion illegal was a society that approved of violence against women; that making abortion illegal was simply a sanctimonious, self-righteous form of violence against women- it was just another way of legalizing violence against women, Nurse Caroline would say.”
Limiting or removing access to abortion does not result in fewer unwanted children or fewer abortions. The effect of SB8, like all past and proposed bills to restrict abortion rights, is more women having unsafe abortions, unwanted children ending up in the foster care system, and more young women and children finding themselves in poverty.
I am not a militant feminist, and I hope that by being such I make myself more credible when I speak out for the case of my sex. When Texas decides to make abortion illegal without exception for rape or incest, they do nothing to stop abortion. When attempts have been made to defund Planned Parenthood, they do nothing to stop abortion. Instead, they remove safe access to necessary women’s health care, particularly for low-income patients. They subject women who were victims of rape, incest, or simply cannot be pregnant in that moment for whatever reason to high risk and potentially life threatening alternatives. Forcing women, sometimes girls as young as nine or 10, to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is subjecting women to a dangerous, expensive, and painful experience that will impact the rest of their lives.
Dr. Larch says to Homer, when he is struggling with the idea of performing an abortion:
“Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.”
I don’t live in Texas, and it would be easy for me to say that because of that, I’m not impacted by SB8, but that is untrue. Heartbeat bills remove the freedom of choice not only from women, but from their doctors, partners, and loved ones. When abortions are legal, it is not only women who have the freedom of choice with regard to having an orphan or an abortion, but medical professionals as well who can make the decision not to perform an abortion because that they know they are not the only option.
In his preface to the 40th anniversary edition of The World According to Garp, Irving talks about how at the time the novel was written, he believed himself to be writing a period piece. The work was never intended to be timeless, and yet here we are four decades later, and so much of what he describes in his books can be tied directly to what is happening in the world today. Like The World According to Garp, Cider House Rules, is clearly intended to be a period piece, a period that we are in danger of repeating with the Supreme Court’s decision to allow SB8 to go ahead, and imperiling Roe v Wade in the process. The themes he discusses, particularly access to abortion, the polarization of sexes and violence on the basis of sex and gender, are increasingly relevant in the current political climate.
That these novels are not simply period pieces–snapshots of a moment in time and place–is worrisome. That we are witnessing the regression of something past generations fought so hard for us to have is terrifying. That stories bringing to light the unequal treatment of women can be so painfully relevant so many years after they were published, makes me question whether Irving’s works will ever truly be period pieces.