National Catholic Register reports on YouTubers Jesse and Ashley Ridgway, who aborted their unborn son upon learning of a potential Down syndrome diagnosis, brazenly announcing their crime to millions while demanding sympathy. This case lays bare the utter moral collapse of a society that has severed itself from Christ the King and His immutable law.
The Announcement of Murder as Content
The National Catholic Register portal reports what should cause every Catholic soul to tremble with righteous indignation. Jesse and Ashley Ridgway, professional YouTubers, took to social media to announce they had deliberately killed their unborn son because genetic testing indicated Trisomy 21 — Down syndrome. Jesse Ridgway penned what he called “the very difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy due to Trisomy 21,” insisting it was “not made lightly.” He wrote: “We are devastated. This has been extremely traumatic for both of us, especially Ashley.”
Let there be no ambiguity about what occurred here. This is not a “difficult decision.” This is not a “termination of pregnancy.” This is the willful, deliberate, premeditated murder of an innocent child of God — a child who had committed no crime, who had no voice, who had no defense, and whose only “offense” was bearing a genetic condition that the world’s fallen culture deems inconvenient. The Church has always taught, without equivocation, that innocent human blood cries out to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10). The Catechism of the Council of Trent declares that the killing of an innocent person is a crime so grave that it cries to heaven for vengeance. Pope Pius IX, in his Syllabus of Errors, condemns the proposition that civil authority may act without reference to divine law — and here we see the direct fruit of that separation: a society where parents murder their children and call it “choice.”
What is most grotesque is the framing. Ridgway characterizes his own son — his own flesh and blood — as “an inconvenience” and “not a blessing.” This is the language of the Antichrist. This is the vocabulary of a culture that has not merely fallen into error but has embraced evil as a good. When a father can look upon his own unborn child and see not a soul created in the image and likeness of God but an “inconvenience” to be disposed of, we have arrived at what Pope Pius XI described in Quas Primas as the consequence of removing Christ and His law from human society: “the entire human society had to be shaken, because it lacked a stable and strong foundation.”
The Heresy of “Choice” and the Rejection of Divine Providence
Ridgway ended his post by stating he thought the decision would be “beneficial for our family,” adding, “Thankfully we had a choice.” This single word — “choice” — encapsulates the entire modernist heresy applied to the moral order. It is the idolatry of autonomous human will set against the sovereign plan of Almighty God. Jared Kubin, a father who chose life for his son with Down syndrome, offered the correct Catholic response: “I felt in my soul the Lord’s plan was perfect and if our son was going to have Down Syndrome we would love him and shepherd him through this world the best we could. We get what we get. Anything from the Lord was a BLESSING and I was not going to point my finger at Him.”
Here we see the contrast between the Catholic understanding of Divine Providence and the pagan idolatry of self-determination. The Catholic faith teaches that every human life is willed by God for its own sake — not for its utility, not for its productivity, not for its conformity to some arbitrary standard of “normalcy,” but because God Himself has chosen to create that soul and infuse it into that body at that moment. To reject a child because of a genetic condition is to commit the sin of the Pharisees, who looked upon the blind man and asked who had sinned — Christ answered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him” (John 9:3). The child with Down syndrome is not a mistake. He is not a defect. He is a soul created by Almighty God for His own eternal purposes.
The Church’s teaching on this matter is not ambiguous. Pope Pius XI in Casti Connubii (1930) condemned abortion as a crime against God, against nature, and against the law of nations. He wrote that those who procure an abortion “are guilty of a most grave crime” and that the Church imposes excommunication for this act. The Second Council of Braga (572 AD) declared that any woman who procures abortion is subject to ten years of penance — and this was for early-term abortion, when the full humanity of the child was not even understood as clearly as it is today with modern science. Today, with ultrasound imaging, with genetic testing, with the ability to see the child’s heartbeat at six weeks, there is absolutely no room for ignorance. The Ridgways knew exactly what they were doing. They killed their son.
The Double Standard: Love for Animals, Murder for Children
Podcast host Isabel Brown exposed a damning double standard in the Ridgways’ online history: they had previously broadcast tender, exhaustive efforts to care for a terminally ill family pet, yet that same standard of unconditional love was not extended to their unborn son. She noted: “In WHAT WORLD do we say you’re a good person for doing anything possible to keep your dog alive with no kidneys facing Stage IV terminal cancer… while simultaneously you instantly decide to brutally kill your innocent…”
This observation cuts to the heart of the cultural pathology. When a society places the life of a pet above the life of a child, it has inverted the natural order that God Himself established. Man was given dominion over the animals (Gen. 1:26), but the life of a human being — made in the image of God, destined for eternity, capable of knowing and loving his Creator — is of infinitely greater value than any animal. This inversion is not accidental. It is the direct consequence of the denial of the supernatural. When man denies that he has an immortal soul, when he denies that there is a God who judges the living and the dead, when he denies that human life has a supernatural destiny — then he reduces himself to the level of the beast, and beasts become his equals, even his superiors. Pope Pius XI warned in Quas Primas that when God and Jesus Christ are removed from human society, “the foundations of authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The same applies to the recognition of the sanctity of life: when God is removed, life becomes cheap, disposable, subject to the whims of those with power.
The Conciliar Sect’s Complicity in the Culture of Death
While individual Catholics like Lila Rose, JD Flynn, and others have spoken out with clarity and courage, one must ask: where is the institutional voice that should thunder against this evil? The structures occupying the Vatican — the conciliar sect that has usurped the name of the Catholic Church — have systematically dismantled the Church’s prophetic witness against abortion. The “Second Vatican Council,” that great apostasy inaugurated by the heretic John XXIII, produced Dignitatis Humanae, a document that enshrined religious liberty as a civil right — thereby undermining the Church’s authority to demand that civil law conform to the natural law and the law of God. The same council’s pastoral constitution Gaudium et Spes spoke of abortion in language so cautious and compromised that it effectively handed the pro-abortion movement the theological cover it needed.
Pope Pius IX, in Cum ex Apostolatus Officio, declared that anyone who defects from the Catholic faith — including through the promotion of doctrines contrary to the faith — is deprived of all authority. The conciliar “popes” from John XXIII onward have consistently refused to exercise the Church’s full authority against the abortion industry. They have allowed Catholic politicians who support abortion to receive “Communion.” They have failed to exterminate the pro-abortion Catholic organizations that operate openly within their structures. They have, in practice, legitimized the culture of death even when they occasionally utter words of disapproval. The Ridgways’ crime did not occur in a vacuum. It occurred in a culture that the conciliar sect has done everything to create and nothing to destroy.
The Witness of Parents Who Chose Life
Amidst this darkness, the witness of parents like JD Flynn, Steve Redmond, and Jared Kubin shines as a beacon of Catholic truth. Flynn, a father of children with Down syndrome, wrote: “Raising children with Down syndrome *is* hard. It gets harder as they get older and I get older. What the posters don’t understand is that we ought not snuff out people who are burdens to us.” Steve Redmond, reflecting on 23 years with his son, noted: “People with Down syndrome shine a light on everything that’s good in the world. They have a purpose.”
This is the Catholic understanding of suffering and human dignity. The cross is not an inconvenience to be avoided — it is the means by which God redeems the world. The child with Down syndrome, like every human being, is called to sanctity, to union with God, to eternal beatitude. His life has infinite value — not because of what he can produce or achieve, but because God has willed him into existence and destined him for glory. The Church has always taught that the measure of a society’s justice is how it treats its most vulnerable members. A society that kills its most vulnerable children is not merely unjust — it is diabolical.
The Call to Repentance and the Hope of Mercy
Lila Rose stated: “There’s hope and healing available for anyone who has chosen abortion — but the first step has to be admitting what was done to this child of God and asking for forgiveness from God.” This is the only true path forward. The Ridgways must confront the full reality of what they have done: they have murdered their son. Not “terminated a pregnancy.” Not “made a difficult decision.” They have killed an innocent human being, and that child now stands before the throne of God as a witness against them.
The Church’s sacrament of Confession exists precisely for sins of this magnitude. But true contrition requires more than sadness — it requires hatred of the sin, a firm purpose of amendment, and a willingness to accept whatever penance God demands. If the Ridgways are indeed Catholic — and the fact that this was reported in the National Catholic Register suggests some connection — they are bound by the Church’s law to repent of this mortal sin, to confess it to a validly ordained priest, and to dedicate the rest of their lives to the defense of the unborn. There is no middle ground. There is no “understanding their pain” while excusing their crime. Mercy without justice is not mercy — it is complicity.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared that Christ the King must reign not only in the hearts of individuals but in families, in civil society, and in the laws of nations. The Ridgways’ crime is the direct result of Christ’s kingship being denied in the public square. Until nations recognize the sovereignty of Christ the King over all aspects of life — including the protection of the unborn — these atrocities will continue. The answer is not better “dialogue” or more “compassionate” language. The answer is the social reign of Christ the King, the restoration of Catholic civilization, and the legal protection of every innocent human being from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death.
We pray for the soul of the Ridgways’ murdered son. We pray for their repentance. And we pray for the restoration of Christ’s kingship over a world that has descended into the abyss of its own making.
Source:
YouTubers Spark National Outrage After Aborting Unborn Child Due to Down Syndrome Diagnosis (ncregister.com)
Date: 05.06.2026