Ernst Jünger's Pro-life Stance on Abortion
A timely consideration given recent events.
What is more, modern mass society and technology demand not less but ever greater human sacrifice. The age has grown cruel. One need only look to the countless victims of accidents due to mass industrial production and modern transportation or the “bestial” attack on the unborn for proof.
- On Pain (1934)
When one considers pain’s penetration into the realm of procreation, one cannot forget the assault on the unborn, which typifies the simultaneously weak and bestial character of the Last Man. To be sure, a mind incapable of differentiating between war and murder or crime and disease will definitely select in territorial struggles the safest and most pitiful method of killing. For a defense lawyer, one only sees the suffering of the plaintiff, but not that of the unprotected and silent.
- On Pain (1934)
The most comprehensive act of killing which can be observed today is directed against the unborn. It is to be foreseen that this phenomenon, which possesses with respect to the ‘individual’ the sense of a greater security of a particular lifestyle, will play, for the typus, the role of demographic policy. It is equally easy to sense the rediscovery of the very old science of depopulation politics. To it belongs the already famous formula “vingt millions de trop”, an aperçu which meanwhile gained in clarity through population transfers, a means by which one begins to eliminate social or national minorities using administrative channels.
- The Worker (1932)
We have already touched upon the evaluation of individual existence as it is expressed in the bitter struggle over the death penalty and which stands in strange disproportion to the number of unborn babies killed.
- The Worker (1932)
The laws of war also apply to the economy and to all other domains: there is no longer a difference between combatants and non-combatants. Whole libraries could be assembled in which would echo the thousands of complaints of people who see themselves suddenly attacked from invisible positions and stripped in every respect of sense and fortune. This is the great, and the only theme of the literature of the decline nowadays, but we do not have more time to deal with it here.
This kind of inclusion knows no exceptions. It affects the child in the cradle, and even the one in the mother’s womb, just as surely as it affects the monk in his cell, or the negro [sic] who cuts into the bark of the rubber tree in the tropical forest. This inclusion is therefore total, and it differs from theoretical inclusion with respect to universal human rights, in that it is, through and through, practical and indisputable.- The Worker (1932)
It was already early morning, a time when the night bar is most revealing. The men—I no longer know why—were discussing abortion. In Eumeswil, abortion is one of the actions that are punishable but not prosecuted. They include, among other things, gambling, smoking opium, and—strangely enough from the Casbah’s viewpoint—pederasty. Nearly everyone gets involved in an abortion, everyone knows about it, people even boast about it. But the authorities look the other way. I, too, would have fallen victim to my dear old dad and been flushed down the toilet if my mother had not insisted on having me.
- Eumeswil (1977)
His guiding thought in that discussion (which, as we recall, concerned abortion) was, more or less: It is reprehensible to delegate a misdeed. The hunter takes his son to the mother’s grave and kills him. He does not assign the task to anyone else—not his brother, not the shaman; he carries it out himself.
- Eumeswil (1977)
Ernst Jünger is one of those philosophers who has influenced me a great deal, perhaps more than any other at this point. I’ve read the greater part of his works which have been translated into English, and one of the most surprising things I found is that Jünger is pro-life, without question, and he explores the issue from several angles.
In 1932, he wrote Der Arbeiter (The Worker), in which he explains the typus of the worker. He touches on various subjects including war, technology, and even spirituality. He mentions abortion three times in total. The first time, he notes that the bitter struggle to end the death penalty stands in “strange disproportion to the number of unborn babies killed.” In other words, people are quick to call for the end of the death penalty, a rarely used judicial punishment, but do not dare speak out against abortion, which kills hundreds of thousands; in fact, they actively cheer it on.
In another spot, not too far from the first mention of it, Jünger notes that “The most comprehensive act of killing which can be observed today is directed against the unborn.” This stands true now. We have all seen the statistics. Tens of millions of children have been slaughtered in the womb since Roe v Wade. Yet, it is hardly noticed by the broader public, or excused as an economic necessity, or as a “right” of the mother to take the child’s life (though she outsources that act to a physician). Right before that sentence, he speaks of how total war targets the collective and not the individual, leading to an abstract and exacerbated cruelty. Is it any coincidence that he immediately gives the example of abortion, to illustrate how the mechanisms of total war and its abstract cruelty play out in other sectors of life today?
He mentions it one more time, as an example of how people today feel they are being attacked from “invisible positions.” His first example of such attacks in ordinary life are, you guessed it, abortion! The unborn child in the mother’s womb is under assault by unknown forces, at least from its perspective.
All these mentions of abortion are at best neutral observations, but I think it is safe to say that Jünger is suggesting that the modern world has an incoherent view of human rights and of what violence is acceptable and is pointing out that the abstract cruelty which abounds today is most acutely observed in the way we mercilessly kill unborn children en masse.
Two years later, Jünger would release an essay entitled On Pain. In this work, his language concerning abortion is even more clear, and even more negative.
He calls the attack on the unborn “bestial” and considers it characteristic of the weak, animalistic “Last Man” described by Nietzsche. He also points out that we see the suffering of those who are able to make a defense for themselves, but not of the “unprotected and silent,” i.e., the unborn. He minces no words in describing the barbaric act of abortion in this essay.
There is one other book of his which touches on the topic of abortion, that being the dystopian novel Eumeswil. In the novel, the main character is actually an abortion survivor, and it plays an integral role in his personality and how he relates to his father, especially. It is interesting that in Eumeswil, it is the father who seeks to abort the narrator, though the mother ultimately elects to spare him. The narrator deals with the anguish of knowing that his father, in a sense, hated him and wanted to kill him in the womb. How could this not be a commentary on the tragedy of abortion today? How many children were nearly killed, or even survived an abortion? How must it feel for a child to hear their parent wax about the importance of a woman’s “bodily right” to kill her baby before it was born? “That could’ve been me.”
The narrator also tells of how, in his society, abortion is seen as an economic and social necessity despite being frowned upon on paper. He also recounts a story of how the leader of Eumeswil actually condemns abortion because it is “reprehensible to delegate a misdeed.” This may strike us as a strange angle from which to critique abortion, but I am reminded of how Pope Francis compares abortion to hiring a hitman. It is delegating the task of murder to another person, a nameless, faceless physician.
This is all incredibly timely given the disastrous vote that took place on Tuesday, November 7th in Ohio. That wretched state voted to enshrine the right to abortion in its constitution and created loopholes that allow abortion at any time during pregnancy so long as the woman attains a doctor’s note saying it is in the interest of her health. Ohio is not the first pro-life defeat, though. Every single ballot issue has been won by the abortionist side. Even though Roe was overturned, and some states have very good laws, it seems that the pro-life side is unable to fortify its position for one simple reason: abortion is popular with the American people.
Why is that? It is for no other reason than that we are living in the age of the bestial Last Man, who jumps to the defense of heinous criminals and advocates for the end of the seldom used death penalty, while also cheering on the death of countless unborn children, and even supporting the expansion of euthanasia. It is an evil position, incoherent in some sense, but logical inasmuch as it reflects the utter disregard for human life that exists in society today, and the way in which we have justified the most egregious policies on so-called “humanitarian” grounds.
Today it is good for us to remember how evil our world is and how its evil is best captured in its mass slaughter of innocent, helpless human beings. Ernst Jünger is one source of many from which we can draw from to drive this point home, and I hope he serves as an example for the Right, especially the non-Christian Right, of how one ought to be pro-life if they truly oppose the spirit of this wretched age of the Last Man.
Excellent article. Beautifully said. Couldn't agree more.