They Had an Abortion After a Down Syndrome Test, Then Told Millions, death threats followed [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/06/us/down-syndrome-abortion-jesse-ridgway.html?unlocked_article_code=1.olA.FSSc.2L9n2kU4poqS&smid=url-share



They Had an Abortion After a Down Syndrome Test, Then Told Millions
After Jesse Ridgway, a popular YouTuber, and his wife, Ashley, revealed the news, death threats followed.



For more than a decade, Jesse Ridgway has made a living posting YouTube videos, some personal, to millions of followers. It seemed natural, then, he said, to share that he and his wife, Ashley, had decided to terminate her pregnancy after a test revealed the presence of Trisomy 21, a form of Down syndrome.

“This choice was not made lightly,” Mr. Ridgway, 33, wrote in a lengthy post on X on Wednesday evening, two days after his wife underwent an abortion.

“We made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family,” he added.

People share many personal things on social media — infidelity, job loss, terminal illness. But almost never this. The post, viewed 22.1 million times, received a torrent of hateful comments from parents of children with Down syndrome, abortion opponents and even the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who called the couple’s decision “evil.” The couple said they had received death threats and been likened to Hitler.