Murderers Don’t Get to Mourn

A Not-So-Sympathetic Take on the Ridgway Abortion

Last week, Jesse Ridgway posted a video on his personal channel showing the moment he and Ashley received the results of an amniocentesis. The test confirmed that their unborn child had Trisomy 21, more commonly known as Down syndrome.

Then, on Wednesday, Jesse shared in an Instagram Story that he and Ashley had made the “difficult decision” to terminate the pregnancy.

“I know some of you may be very disappointed to hear this news. We are devastated,” he wrote in the since-expired post, according to the Los Angeles Times. “This has been extremely traumatic for both of us, especially Ashley. She underwent the procedure earlier this week and is on the mend.”

When Conviction Is Tested

For many, this may have been just another tragic story passing through the news cycle. But for families who have received that same diagnosis, and especially for those of us who have welcomed children into this world with Down syndrome, it is impossible to read it as just another passing story.

It should be obvious why a case like this hits close to home. My wife and I had a similar experience in our first pregnancy, much of which I’ve already written about.

For that reason, I can relate to this situation to some degree.

As a Christian family, we have always been staunchly committed to the sanctity of life. I have preached against the practice of abortion and also have written multiple pieces on its atrocities. I attend a church that is just as passionate about ending it as I am.

However, even as an adamant opponent of abortion, when we received our daughter’s diagnosis of Down syndrome, I had to admit that there was an extra layer of testing my conviction had not yet undergone.

This is, after all, one of those “extreme” anecdotal experiences that abortion advocates believe makes the case for abortion clear. Often, they present situations like this as if the quality of life of the child or the family is at stake. Their argument is that in circumstances such as these, parents should have the ability to terminate the pregnancy at any point.

Obviously, we do not believe that anecdotal cases or circumstances change the right to life for anyone at any place or time. And so naturally, our daughter was born and is, by God’s grace, thriving today.

The Limits of Sympathy

However, years later, a brother asked me whether I had possessed even the slightest temptation to turn back on my convictions during that season. I wasn’t sure how to respond.

Looking back, it is possible that I had moments of weakness. I was anxious about the future. I wondered what would separate our family from the norm. I feared what life would look like for our daughter, for our marriage, and for the rest of our family. And all of this was happening while real voices, from real people, urged us to take the easy way out.

Therefore, to some extent, I can track with what Jesse Ridgway wrote when he tried to justify the publicity of his experience. He said, “People still need to see vulnerability and hear the raw truth.” He continued, “There is real suffering going on and it is being done in silence and fear.”

In many ways, our family also withstood the pressure of that season silently. We, like the Ridgways, knew that not many people would understand our situation or the difficulties that would come.

However, this is where my family’s similarities—and sympathies—end.

No Special Case for Murder

In responding to his critics, Ridgway replied that “many of the people throwing stones don’t even have children, let alone one with a condition and most likely will never do the things they say they’re going to do.”

The irony of this reply is that many of his critics do, in fact, have children with a condition. Many of them have received the same diagnosis. Many of them have felt the same fear. And yet, they carried their children to term. They did the very thing Ridgway assumed they would never do.

What sets such families apart is not that their experience was easier or less frightening. What sets them apart is that their suffering did not deceive them into believing there was some uniquely special case for murder.

Scripture gives us no such category. Paul writes, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13).

That does not mean every trial feels the same. Some situations are heavier than others. But it does mean that no temptation is so exceptional that sin becomes justifiable. There is no amount of fear that makes murder necessary.

After all, it is God who knits children together in their mothers’ wombs (Ps. 139:13). Some pregnancies, disability or not, bring anxiety, distress, and uncertainty about the future. But none of these things place a child outside the sovereign care of God. Before the world sees the child, God already knows the child. No circumstance is exceptional to the God who forms life in the womb.

Perhaps the oblivious arrogance of the Ridgway family began not merely when they believed their circumstances justified the killing of their five-month-old child, but when they assumed their circumstances were exceptional at all.

Moral Clarity, Not Vulnerability

Therefore, to the Ridgways, I leave this.

We live in a society that applauds vulnerability and authenticity so much that it often distracts us from the greater moral issues at hand. There may been real pain. There may have been real tears.

But suffering does not negate responsibility. Making a Youtube video does not automatically turn you into a victim. None of that changes what happened. A child was killed. A precious life God formed in the womb was ended.

And before sympathy is extended to those who were responsible, there must first be moral clarity about the child who never had a voice.

Because at the end of the day, murderers don’t get to mourn.