Jesse and Ashley Ridgway announcing that Ashley is pregnant

The announcement by Jesse Ridgway of his and his wife’s decision to abort their child when that child received an in utero diagnosis of Down Syndrome has sparked two debates. The lesser debate is on the appropriate use of social media and our fixation on the lives of other people. The higher debate is on the morality of abortion as a means to rid society of those who are regarded as “lesser” or “disabled” or mentally and/or physically “challenged.”

The lesser debate first.

Jesse and Ashley Ridgway are social media infuencers. That job didn’t exist a quarter of a century ago, but with the advent of social media, anyone can get on one of the many vehicles of social media and pour their guts out to the world, and possibly even make a living doing so. If you gain enough “followers,” you become identified as an “influencer.” There are so many. Apparently, the Ridgways have over a million such “followers.” That’s a lot of people but, in a country with a population over 350 million, still only a small slice of the pie. The Ridgways have made YouTube videos about their life together for over ten years now, and their “influence” is valued enough that it’s become Jesse Ridgway’s career. Yes, you have that right. This man has made a career out of posting videos on YouTube about his life. If you feel like you need a daily dose of vicariousness, you can check them out at https://www.youtube.com/@McJuggerNuggets. Honestly, I don’t know how I’ve lived so long without knowing the details of Jesse and Ashley Ridgway’s life! Honestly, I don’t know how a man makes a living simply posting videos about his life. Are the Ridgway’s million followers truly that bored with their own lives?

As if it was possible, the debate about social media, it’s influence and appropriate use, took a turn toward the sensational when Jesse Ridgway posted on X that he and Ashley had made the “difficult decision” to abort their child when that child received an in utero diagnosis of Down Syndrome. I have read that the news was first announced unexpectedly at a gender reveal party recorded by the Ridgways. A family member who was charged with announcing the gender read the results of a test that, along with gender, reported that the Ridgway’s baby had tested positive for Trisomy 21. Then, when the amniocentesis test was done, the results were again recorded live and posted on social media. The video reportedly shows the Ridgways breaking down in emotional trauma for several minutes. Even still, they chose to post it.

The crux of this lesser debate is this: is it appropriate to record and post events in one’s life that are going to not only be controversial, but could also bring discomfort to oneself and to one’s followers? TMZ interviewed the Ridgways, where they were asked about the appropriateness of posting these moments. They offered their explanation for making their actions public. They spoke about “our truth.” I want to scream every time I hear someone speaking about “my truth.” You don’t get ot have your own personal truth. Part of the Ridgway’s truth, as I mentioned above, is that their social media is monetized. Knowing that their social media is monetized (in other words, they get paid when people watch), one cannot help but wonder if this fiasco is going to prove a financial boon for the Ridgways. Visits to their website or YouTube channel have doubtless been hundreds or thousands more than usual. That’s money in the pockets of the Ridgways. They say that, given what they’ve shared with their “fans” in the past, how open and transparent they’ve been, it only made sense to them to share this. But knowing that they’re getting paid for sharing this makes it that much more disturbing.

When reading Jesse Ridgway’s announcement, I was put off by the sense of entitlement, the idea that this is what’s best for their family, that they are somehow the victims in this drama, and the expectation that they would and should receive support from their followers, that people would “understand” their decision. The Ridgways have reported that they’ve received multiple death threats. In reading the comments on their website, I read no death threats. Even still, I don’t necessarily doubt that they have received such threats on other social media vehicles. The Ridgways, it seems, are everywhere on social media. People get emotional, and you can be anonymous on social media. But politicians, celebrities, and other public figures receive death threats on a daily basis. Karmelo Anthony and Austin Metcalf’s families have both been receiving death threats. Why would you announce such a thing and not expect push back? Some of the comments, the name calling, that I did read was, in my estimation, inappropriate and counterintuitive coming from people who say they respect life. But the fact that the Ridgways made such a devastating and personal event public, their surprise at encountering what they call the “dark side” of humanity wreaks of either supreme naivete or dissembling.

The bottom line is, if you presume to make your personal life public, people are going to react. And they’re not always going to love you and understand you for what you decide to do with your life. A lot of the comments on the website were about how much their fans enjoyed their videos and respected the Ridgways, even looked up to them, but that respect and admiration is gone after this decision. Many comments were about how selfish the Ridgways are, how they had no right to describe themselves as a couple who “lost” a pregnancy – because they didn’t lose a pregnancy, they aborted their child. Many could not fathom how they could kill their child on the grounds that their child would have a disability and upset their lives. The Ridgways do give off an element of entitlement: our lives are great, we deserve the kind of life we want, and we’re going to share every detail of our lives because we’re so wonderful. Well, even if the Ridgways are as wonderful as they seem to think they are, life often is not wonderful, and even people who enjoy the most wonderful lives experience suffering. Only Jesse and Ashley Ridgway seem surprised that they should be subjected to suffering, to heartache, to challenges, and when they realized they were facing the greatest challenge they’ve prolly ever experienced, they punted. They said, “No way!” They were not going to go that route. Jesse says this was a “difficult decision.” In reality, though, they took the easy way out. And they shared that. No surprise that many people were not impressed, and many more outright disgusted.

Now, the higher debate.

In reading the comments on their website, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of people were disappointed, saddened, or disgusted by the Ridgway’s decision to abort their child on the grounds of a Down Syndrome diagnosis. This was heartening, but only in theory. For the fact is, the great majority of couples who receive a diagnosis of Down Syndrome do elect to abort their child. The research tells us, in the United States, that roughly 60% to 90% of couples choose elective abortion if they receive a diagnosis of Down Syndrome for their child. That’s a wide margin, and I’m surprised we don’t have better numbers. But it might be that some couples and some medical facilities choose not to report on why women or couples choose abortion. In Europe, the numbers are higher, and in some countries, such as Denmark and the Netherlands, and India, which was a British colony for many decades, nearly every child with an in utero diagnosis of Down Syndrome is aborted. In fact, in the Netherlands, I’ve read that the only children born with Down Syndrome are those where the test gave a false negative. Needless to say, these two European countries, often lauded for their extensive social services, provide no services for families of children with Down Syndrome. The social expectation is to abort. If you choose not to, you’re on your own.

The Catholic Church, of course, can never condone direct abortion for any reason. Our moral foundation rests on the intrinsic dignity of the human person. People, possessing the imago Dei, the image of God, possess because of it an intrinsic dignity that all are bound to respect. That means they possess a dignity because they are humans, no other criteria required. That dignity requires a respect for their life, regardless of the circumstances by which that life came into being, and regardless of the condition of that life, and regardless even of the actions of that life over the course of that life. No one ever loses their God-given dignity as a human being. This is true even should they reject that they possess such a dignity, for no one can surrender what God Himself has given as an immutable character of human life: the imago Die in which they were made. As such, the conditions simply do not exist that justify the willful destruction of innocent human life. It cannot be done. It is always a grave moral wrong to kill an innocent person. And who is more innocent than a child in the womb? A diagnosis of Down Syndrome does not place on that person the guilt of a moral wrong, so no punishment can justifiably be meted out, especially capital punishment.

What has added to the disgust people have felt toward the Ridgways is that they have also been routinely sharing about their dog’s diagnosis of cancer and the financial and medical lengths to which they’ve gone to keep their dog alive. Of course, raising a child with Down Syndrome is a much larger commitment than treating a dog for cancer. Their dog is already ten years old, so he prolly has fewer than ten years of life left. A Down Syndrome child is a life-long commitment. Which is likely making people wonder even more why they’ve been so invested in keeping their dog alive and so uninvested in keeping their child alive. It’s likely, too, that people who have been their fans all these years aren’t happy that the money the Ridgways have spent on their dog’s cancer treatments was available because of Jesse’s career as a social media influencer. So, their fans made it possible for them to pay for their dog’s treatment, and then they go and abort their child. So, yeah, those are some pretty screwed up priorities.

But is the person in the womb a human life? Of course the one in the womb is a human life! What else could it be? From the moment of conception, the one in the womb is certainly human. Does anyone expect the mother to give birth to an ape, or a cat, or a bird? How absurd! The mother is human, the father is human, and the mother will give birth to a human. From the moment of conception, the one in the womb is alive. Immediately, the one in the womb begins to participate in one of the defining characteristics of life: growth. People will insist that the one in the womb does not have a neurological system developed enough to register brain waves until so-and-so number of weeks, so he or she is not sentient, cannot have thoughts, cannot experience pain, and is therefore not yet a living human being. Others give any one of a myriad of other reasons to reject the humanity of the one in the womb. But that’s all hogwash! We would never expect a human life that is two weeks in utero to possess a neurological system that can produce measureable brain waves, any more than we would expect a human life that is two years old to possess the capacity to reproduce. The point is: at every stage of human development, the one in the womb possesses all the characteristics of human life consistent with that stage of human development. The same is true, by the way, for every one of us now outside the womb. Even if some of those characteristics of life – such as the capacity to reproduce – is mitigated or absent, the other characteristics of life being present, we still regard this one as a living being, and a human being.

A diagnosis of Down Syndrome changes none of this. It does not impact the dignity of the human person who is diagnosed with Down Syndrome. That dignity is still intrinsic to the person, and that dignity requires our respect. The idea that we can kill a person because they possess a disability, no matter how fraught with difficulty or even doom, is contrary to the moral principle of respect for the intrinsic dignity of the human person. It simply cannot be done. It is a grave moral wrong. Some have said that we ought not judge the Ridgways. Well, if they mean judging them to heaven or hell, of course we cannot. That is God’s business alone. But, if what is meant is that we cannot condemn their act as one of grave moral horror, they are wrong. Just as we can judge murder, rape, exploitation, extortion, slavery, and so many other grave moral wrongs as grave moral wrongs, so may we and must we condemn the Ridgway’s decision, or anyone’s decision, to kill a child because that child has Down Syndrome.

We have lost our respect for the intrinsic dignity of the human person. As a society, we don’t accept it, anymore. Sadly, we all are under the gun to justify our initial and our continued existence. So, who gets to decide if a person is worthy of living? The Ridgways decided that their child was not worthy of living because his or her diagnosis would have placed too great a burden on them, on “their truth,” on the lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed. They faced a challenge they did not believe they could face. So, they took the easy way out. They killed their child. The sad truth is, they are with the majority, even the great majority, of women and couples who face a diangosis of Down Syndrome for their child. They justify this by saying that the child’s life will be too hard. They convince themselves that they are doing the child a favor. In reality, they are doing themselves a favor, because the idea of being a parent of a Down Syndrome child was too hard for them. They didn’t think they could handle it. Now they are trying to move on, excited, as Jesse wrote, about trying again and hoping for a better outcome. Well, almost any outcome would be better than killing your own child. What they mean, of course, by a “better outcome” is a child who better fits their idea of the child they deserve: perfect in every way.

Be Christ for all. Bring Christ to all. See Christ in all.