They Didn’t Get The Perfect Baby So At 5 Months They Murdered It

A big story that lit the internet on fire is the story of Jesse Ridgway, who is known online as McJuggerNuggets.

He’s a 33-year-old YouTuber, filmmaker, actor, and director from New Jersey with 4 million subscribers. Back in March, Ridgway and his wife, Ashley, announced their first pregnancy with a pretty excited post. On April 8, they put out an ultrasound video.

We are big fans of ultrasounds, specifically because many women don’t recognize what is growing inside them. That’s because they’ve been lied to. And this is why we team with pro-life organizations to provide ultrasounds for women who are pregnant and considering whether to abort their baby.

On June 3, Jesse then posted a detailed statement on X, reposted by his wife, announcing that they had killed the baby in utero, which is what abortion is.

He wrote:

This week, my wife and I made the very difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy due to Trisomy 21. The choice was not made lightly. We really appreciate all of the personal stories that you guys shared with us, especially the unconditional support we received from fans no matter what we decided. I know some of you may be very disappointed to hear this news.

We are devastated. This has been extremely traumatic for both of us, especially Ashley. She underwent the procedure earlier this week and is on the mend. Thankfully, everything went smoothly, but emotionally we are drained. Trisomy 21, also known as Down Syndrome, is caused by an extra chromosome. It is caused by an error in cell division, like a glitch. The odds of a baby having it is 1 in 1000. When I first confronted this news, I was shocked but optimistic. If they’re a little slow intellectually, then we’ll make it work. I signed on to be a parent, come what may…but I just didn’t fully understand what Down Syndrome entailed.

Once we made it public, it became clear that MOST people don’t know what Down Syndrome entails (and no, it’s not the same as Autism): 50% of babies with DS have heart defects. 75% will have hearing challenges. Over 50% will have vision problems. Impaired immune function, developmental disabilities, learning disabilities, delayed physical development, poor muscle tone, structural issues with face, decreased lifespan, etc…Sadly, the list is long, feel free to look it up…

Down Syndome isn’t a “blessing”, it is objectively sh*tty from a health perspective. I didn’t realize just how rough it is for the child, let alone the family…more often than not, they would be fully dependent on others for the rest of their life. The miscarriage risk is also close to 50%, which made matters worse…they may never see the light of day and it puts Ashley further at risk. We spoke with doctors, friends, family and genetic counselors and learned that up to 90% of women terminate their pregnancy after learning the baby has Trisomy 21. This was WAY higher than I expected, I thought it would be lower given that I hear so many say they kept or would keep the baby.

I believe that’s because most terminations happen privately, it feels shameful. A lot of judgment being cast. You never think you’d be in this type of situation until it happens to you and then things change. To all of my fans who have weighed in on this topic who have Autism, Down Syndrome or any other conditions…we appreciate you. You matter a lot and we’re glad you’re here. I commend you and your families for having the strength and courage to push forward. As for us, we made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family. Thankfully, we had a choice. It will take a little time to move on, but we are excited to try again in the future and hopefully have a better outcome. Love you guys & thank you for understanding.

This is disturbing stuff.

Now, to pretend that every parent doesn’t wish for, hope for, and pray for a healthy child is silly. I thank God I have four healthy children and a fifth, with the help of God, on the way.

When you make the decision to get pregnant, this is obviously part of the calculation, because what is very clear from this entire story is that, from the very beginning, it was acknowledged as a human life.

The ultrasound was done and they were excited. They weren’t excited because there was no human value.

Not only that, this post demonstrates why his wife is devastated: This is not a meaningless cluster of cells. It is a preborn child. That is why it’s devastating.

Once you understand that there is a moral component to the life of that child, killing the child becomes immoral.

That doesn’t mean that morality is easy. Morality is not easy. Morality is very often incredibly difficult. That doesn’t mean life is always wonderful, beautiful, or simple.

It does mean that doing the moral thing is required, whether or not it is difficult, and the only person in this scenario who really pays the price is the child. Was that child’s life not worth living? That is the actual presumption: that if you have all of these conditions, it’s better if the child is never born.

This is immoral. What makes it even more immoral and absurd is that the same YouTuber had put out a post earlier this year talking about their dog being diagnosed with stage-four kidney disease last year. He wrote:

Sweet’s Super Sixth Birthday. After she was diagnosed with stage four kidney disease last year around her fifth birthday, the vet said she had weeks to live. If we were lucky, maybe a few months. ONE YEAR LATER. She is still fighting. She is in the .0001% of superhero dogs that can continue living with no kidneys. We all need a hero in this life. Jenny has been one of mine.

First: I have a dog. Second: Dogs are great.

But a dog will never feel the way a human feels about life; a dog will never have the life experiences a human does.

This disconnect is about convenience. I’m not going to pretend that convenience is an unimportant factor in life. It obviously is.

But sacrifice and morality are about sacrifice and morality.

Every child is a blessing. But that doesn’t mean all blessings are easy. We have this bizarre notion in our society that everything in your life is either all good or all bad, either all easy or all hard, and that hard equals bad and easy equals good.

That’s not true. I have friends who have children with issues like Down syndrome, and it requires a lot from them. Sometimes it puts them on the verge of true, serious hardship.

That’s why they are heroes for doing it.

But being heroic means standing up for morality even when it’s hard. If we have a world full of people who simply dispose of babies for convenience, there is something truly evil happening on a societal level.

When he says, “We really appreciate all of the personal stories that you guys shared with us, especially the unconditional support we received from fans with no matter what we decided,” you cannot make a decision about another person’s life and be supported in that decision when it horribly affects that other person’s life.

The entire premise of this story, all of it, soup to nuts, is that this was a child. Otherwise, this would have no relevance to anyone.

That is the buried lede. Everyone is affected emotionally by this particular story because there was an ultrasound, and it showed a baby, a human life with potential, and everyone recognizes it.

If this were just the removal of a polyp, no one would care on either side. They also put out a video that showed them finding out that their child had trisomy 21.

The reason that we’re commenting on this issue is that it’s public. They are the ones who made this public in the first place. And so it became an issue of public controversy.

There may be a lot of people saying today, “It’s a private issue.”

I think we all have something to say when someone does something morally wrong, and when it becomes a matter of public controversy, we certainly have something to say about it, because it’s a comment on what society’s standards are. And societal standards should protect human life, because otherwise people make decisions not based on the independent interests of human life with potential; they make decisions based on what they believe their lifestyle will be and how their life will be affected by that thing.

That’s why you have moral rules and standards in the first place.