YouTuber gets death threats after announcing wife’s abortion over child’s Down syndrome
Jesse Ridgway and his wife terminated their pregnancy due to a 95% chance of Down syndrome, leading to death threats. Photo / Getty Images
An American YouTuber and his wife have been compared to Hitler after announcing they had terminated their pregnancy because the baby was likely to be born with Down syndrome.
Jesse Ridgway, 33, said he and Ashley, his wife, now sleep with a loaded gun by their bed after receiving a string of death threats for aborting their child, which had a high chance of having the genetic condition.
“This choice was not made lightly,” Ridgway wrote two days after his wife had the abortion.
“We made a difficult decision that we believe in the long run will be beneficial for our family,” he added. “I’ve never seen such hate and vitriol for two people grieving the loss of their unborn child and making an impossible decision.”
Ridgway, known as McJuggerNuggets online, said it was “very courageous” that other parents had chosen to keep their children with Down syndrome, but wished that they would “accept the differences between us when it has no actual bearing on your life”.
The Ridgways first learnt about the diagnosis through what was supposed to be a gender reveal celebration, which they recorded and posted online.
In the video, Ridgway’s brother was entrusted with the test results revealing the sex and the probability of the child being born with Down syndrome.
Staring at the results, the brother appears visibly uneasy and quietly tells Ridgway about the unexpected news, but the gender reveal proceeds anyway.
About a month later, the couple posted another video, in which they revealed the results of an amniocentesis, a test that provides definitive results for the likelihood that a child will be born with genetic disorders. The test put the child’s chance of having Down syndrome at 95%.
Ashley Ridgway can be seen sobbing while she walks away from the camera.
The post in which they announced they had terminated the pregnancy was viewed 22.1 million times.
The couple then received a torrent of hateful comments from anti-abortion opponents, including Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, who called the couple’s decision “evil”.
In a separate post, Ridgway said: “The last 24 hours have exposed a side of humanity that is deeply disturbing. Being called ‘murderous pieces of s--t, evil, compared to Hitler’ and receiving NONSTOP DEATH THREATS [sic].
“It’s very divisive. Luckily, after 20 years on the internet, this is par the course for me taking on the crazies, so I’m glad I can help further the conversation.
“That’s exactly why I wanted to share this story. People still need to see vulnerability and hear the raw truth. There is real suffering going on and it is being done in silence and fear.”
Speaking to TMZ, he said the couple now kept a loaded gun on the bedside table and had installed a security gate at their home.
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