Editorial Hard cider A movie about abortion and other things
STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Daria Donnelly Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior...
...still missing...
...Fi- fighting contingent is known as the SPLA (Sudanese Peonally, Dr...
...By this juncture Homer's earlier resolve has already national Money Order or by check on a U.S...
...Fourteen children, some of them Muslim, and spurred on by our scientific mastery of nature, that "men their twenty-two-year-old teacher were killed...
...Fax: (212) 662-4183...
...dollars by Inter- tim of father-daughter incest...
...of Dr...
...Homer leaves the orphanage and ends up working with rates for air-mail delivery outside U.S.: Western migrant apple pickers...
...bank...
...cover art: Rita Corbin...
...With fresh discoveries of oil in the south, for all life will inevitably coarsen and diminish...
...And when the father meets his own violent end, Christian and animist tribes in the south...
...Periodicals postage paid at you," he reprimands Homer...
...But none of these hard cases ham University Lincoln Center last month, he logically commit one to abortion on demand...
...In February, days before Bishop Gassis that soft-pedals the crime of incest and elevates abortion to addressed his New York audience, BBC News Online caran absolute moral duty "a tribute to the human spirit...
...Commonweal, [ISSN 0010-3330] A Review of The Cider House Rules is an extended meditation on abortion, and it is a disPublic Affairs, Religion, Literature, and the turbing film for several reasons...
...Susan Nagele, an Illinois-born Maryknoll lay misMore disturbing is the movie's sentimental fatalism about sioner who has spent the past nine years working in remote the inevitability of violence...
...medical school), as an obstetrician and clearly sees him as his heir...
...viding abortions for women who request them...
...Commonweal 6 March 24, 2000...
...Johns, Social or cultural trends detected on Oscar night are often as skimpy as the outfits Quanda Williams Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor worn by some participants...
...405, New York, NY 10115...
...Abortion, whatever one thinks outposts in southern Sudan...
...Portland, ME 04106 (207) 799-4387, classified advertising icated to caring for the "abandoned" children left on his doorstep as he is to procorrespondence to 475 Riverside Dr...
...p. 10, Gibb, Rothco...
...The now Illustrations: Cover design: Christopher more mature Homer, confronted with a woman who threatens to "fix it" herself, Young...
...foreign, $87...
...But how we approach the scene...
...Larch is outraged, and blames the girl's death on the "ignorance" braries and research facilities on CD-ROM and in electronic data bases...
...been eroded by his own initiation into sexual passion and duplicity...
...3, 20, Valu- Homer's decision is presented as an initiation into manhood, his recognition that Soft...
...http: / /www.commonwealmagazine.org...
...Copyright © 2000 Commonweal Foundation...
...STAFF Editor: Margaret O'Brien Steinfels Executive Editor: Paul Baumann Managing Editor: Patrick Jordan Associate Editor: Daria Donnelly Production Editor: Tiina Aleman Senior Writer: Robert G. Hoyt Editorial Assistant: Maurice Timothy Reidy Copy Editor: Susanne Washburn Business Manager: Gregory Wilpert Hard cider Poetry: Rosemary Deen Screen: Richard Alleva Stage/Media: Celia Wren Columnists: John Garvey, ombining the frivolous suspense of a game show and the solemnity of E.J...
...Europe, $89...
...Annual to use it at fundraisers...
...If she had come to you, what would you have New York, N.Y., and at additional offices...
...Display advertising The story is set in an orphanage in Maine in the early 1940s...
...To do so would be to about places like this and the crimes that are committed...
...p. 18, Courtesy of Belgian Federal Government On-line...
...Microfilm fusal infuriates Larch, who berates his protege for misplaced scruples, always from Vol...
...At last year, described the Sudanese war as one of "truly genoa minimum, it is bewildering that some critics call a movie cidal dimensions...
...Larch of "playing God" are dismissed out of hand...
...p. 11, rules touching on human relationships, are obstacles to be overcome when faced Nancy Evelyn...
...has ministered...
...Wilbur Larch, correspondence should be sent to Ruth E. the director of the orphanage, is an ornery soul and a skilled obstetrician, as dedTaylor, 11 Graffam Rd., So...
...Immediately after the bombs struck, a student There is no avoiding moral dilemmas in which all the grabbed a battered camera and microphone and recorded choices may seem unsatisfactory...
...Canada, $81...
...Incest is also violent, yet the movie have been engulfed in civil war...
...That said, one of the movies nominated for best picPublisher Emeritus: Edward S. Skillin ture this year merits further scrutiny...
...Larch...
...Given c Intern: Christopher Ruddy the self-promotional nature of the event, it is dangerous to read too Circulation Manager: Sandra Smith much significance into which films are nominated or eventually awarded prizes...
...The Dinka and their civilization are being Opponents of abortion have long worried that in a society systematically destroyed by aerial bombardment, famine, where 1.4 million fetuses are disposed of every year, respect and enslavement...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S., It is not hard to see where this story is going (or why Planned Parenthood plans $44...
...Nothing...
...Two million people have diedintended to seal the case against moral rule-making of any more than in Rwanda, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Somalia sort...
...Larch has trained Homer Wells, POSTMASTER: send address changes to Commonweal, 475 Riverside Dr., Room 405, the eldest boy in the orphanage (and who hasn't been to high school, much less New York, NY 10115...
...Never a subtle writer, Irving drives this point home again and again, while the worries of those who accuse http://www.commonwealmagazine.org Dr...
...Trained in surgery, columnist portraits, Elaine Mills...
...We canto get hurt, and it's no one's fault...
...In its commentary, the BBC stated: "The governsuch decisions will in large part determine whether we do ment of Sudan...
...You have to choose...
...Someone who don't live here made those rules...
...Dionne, Jr., Sidney Callahan, William Pfaff, Daniel Callahan, a coronation, the "Oscars" (March 26, this year) seem to have a little Jo McGowan something for everyone not glued to "Mother Angelica Live...
...Eventually the world places another desperate woman in Hemisphere, $84...
...foreign, $50...
...Homer simply had an obligation to perform the abortion...
...Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 and on Microfiche Inevitably, a teen-age victim of a botched abortion shows up at the orphanfrom Bell & Howell, Wooster, OH 44691...
...14, Nicholas O'Connell...
...p. 9, Kemchs, being morally responsible means being of "some use...
...Opponents of abortion on demand are frequently confronted with questions about incest and dangerous back-alley EYE ON SUDAN procedures...
...The rules don't mean nothing at violence...
...There are no easy answers to such challenges, The forgotten war although it is useful to be reminded that incest is involved in a minuscule number of abortions and that the number of deaths caused by illegal abortions before Roe has been wild- hen exiled Sudanese Bishop Macram Max Gasly exaggerated...
...Men and women of conCommonweal 5 March 24, 2000 science," Larch tells Homer, "should seize these moments lose sight of our innate limitations and the hard-won wisdom when we can play God...
...That con- the government in Khartoum has intensified its drive to cern is usually dismissed as idle speculation...
...all," he tells us...
...Rules, especially moral Rothco...
...Larch's words, "Someone's going ern tribe, the Dinka, a herding people, among whom Nagele to get hurt, and it's no one's fault...
...Evil, it seems, is an impersonal force loosed in the world combined-and 4 million more have been displaced...
...and monthly July and novel, The Cider House Rules is by turns affectingly sentimental, sure about its August, by Commonweal Foundation, 475 own virtue, and more than a little troubling in the way its pragmatic philosophRiverside Drive, Rm...
...Someone's going tion our own motives are essential moral attitudes...
...E-mail: ical message relies on violence to resolve human problems...
...The conflict pits an Islamcoyly undermines the idea that there can be any strict ac- ic fundamentalist regime in the north, intent on imposing counting for-or any "rules" concerning-what the father strict Islamic law on the entire country, against black African has done...
...This review Digest, and Book Review Index...
...I'm not sorry for anything I've of moral tradition...
...Certainly we must not "seize" these moments oil industry, and it would rather that people didn't know with the utilitarian fervor of Dr...
...But if the es- crush the Dinka and other rebellious tribes...
...Canada, $47...
...Single Copy, $2.50...
...teem in which The Cider House Rules is held is any indication, The Catholic bishops of East Africa, in a joint statement our common moral vocabulary may well be atrophying...
...3, performs the abortion...
...But where Irving's story is most sored primary school in Kauda, in the SPLA-controlled Nuba dangerous is how it taps into the growing moral sentiment, Mountains...
...not "make up the rules every single day," for that, as The The same message is also put into the mouth of the father Cider House Rules unintentionally reveals, is an invitation to who has committed incest...
...Web: manipulative film...
...Commonweal articles also are available at many li- age and dies...
...no one is really responsible...
...Telephone: (212) 662-4200...
...Allowing legal access to abortion in cases sis introduced the documentary The Hidden Gift: of rape, incest, or when a mother's life is in danger, is a W War and Faith in Sudan at its premier at Fordmorally defensible position...
...One of Homer's Commonweal is indexed in Reader's Guide to Pe- chores, along with delivering babies, is to dispose of aborted fetuses in the backriodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, Index of American Periodical Verse, Book Re- yard incinerator...
...We make our own rules-every single day...
...In short, in Dr...
...with the messy business of life, or so Irving wants us to believe...
...The movie's in- said the eighty-four-minute film was "an eye opener to the sistence that physicians unwilling to perform abortions are catastrophe that is happening in Sudan...
...p. 3, Rita Corbin...
...Serials Data program and "silence" surrounding illegal abortion...
...Ultimately, it is a very commonweal@msn.com...
...It concentrated on the work view is...
...morally responsible for the deaths of women who resort to Last July, ABC's "Nightline" ran a half-hour segment on knitting needles is just one example of how extreme Irving's Sudan, "Making a Difference...
...1, 1924, to current issues available through University Microfilm, 300 N. Zeeb stressing that the first moral duty is "to be useful...
...Larch's death, by an accidental drug overdose, is ple's Liberation Army...
...Staff: Elia M.C...
...However, young Homer will not perform abortions...
...Sudan is Africa's largest counof it morally, remains a violent act, and it lies at the dra- try, and for the past seventeen years its 28 million people matic center of the story...
...Humility, awe, and a willingness to quesdone," he goes on...
...done...
...The main rebel the same dynamic is at work...
...That ried live footage on its Web site of the immediate aftermath its promoters imagine it to be an "American classic about of a February 8 government bombing of a Catholic-sponfamily" is simply macabre...
...wants investors for its potentially lucrative harm or good...
...other parts of the world, $99...
...Adapted for the screen by John Irving from his own Arts, is published biweekly except Christmas/New Year's...
...This is what doing nothing gets No.: ISSN 0010-3330...
...All Canadian and foreign subscrip- his path, only this time author Irving further stacks the deck by making her the victions must be paid in U.S...
...Special two-year rate: U.S...
...seventeen othand women of conscience should seize these moments when ers were critically wounded, and Reuters reported ten were we can play God...
...which no one need confront and for which there is no final ABC's cameras vividly conveyed the plight of one southanswer...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 6
