Some posts put the doom in doomscrolling. And this week, a YouTuber who goes by McJuggerNuggets made his contribution. It wasn’t for a thrill or the mere shock value. It was transparent human fear and pain. McJuggerNuggets is Jesse Ridgway. He and his wife found out that their baby was expected to have Down syndrome. On X, Ridgway explains how he tried to make the best of it and come to terms with being a father to a child with such a disability.

In the end, he and his wife decided to have an abortion.

We’ve seen headlines in recent years of places — Iceland, for example — that are on the road to eliminating Down syndrome. Which, of course, means eliminating the people who have Down syndrome. Aborting children who test positive in utero for Down syndrome is not new. And yet it’s jarring to see it announced on social media as if it’s a job change or relocation. Ridgway wrote:

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 with 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. . . .

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.

It is consoling, or hopeful, to see how many people have responded to the post — the most wonderful of their responses are odes from parents to the children they have been blessed with who have Down syndrome. JD Flynn, editor of The Pillar, a Catholic Politico of sorts, is father to two beautiful children with Down syndrome. His darling Pia has had leukemia twice. Max has had myriad sensory issues.

He posted this in response to the commentary around abortion that followed Ridgway’s post:

The various posters are right today. 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. That’s the hard truth of being human I guess.

Beverly Hallberg, president of the District Media Group, posted:

My cousin David has faced some health challenges, but that’s never negated the joy and positive impact he brings to everyone around him. In fact, his 40th birthday party had more than 200 people because he’s THAT loved because he’s loved well.

NewsNation contributor Jennifer Coffindaffer writes:

When I was pregnant with our second child, her test for Down syndrome was positive. My husband and I discussed it for about 2 minutes. We are Catholic so there was no consideration to abort her. We just knew our lives would change. We bought books, spoke to parents of Down syndrome children, and prayed.

When she was born, she did not have Down syndrome, to our surprise. The test was wrong. Tests are often wrong, we later learned. In fact, 10% of positive NIPT results for Down syndrome are false positives.

Our daughter just finished her second year of law school and has thrived. She is my best friend and I don’t know how I could be whole without her.

I saw someone post an excerpt from a column by George Will about his son, Jon:

Two things that have enhanced Jon’s life are the Washington subway system, which opened in 1976, and the Washington Nationals baseball team, which arrived in 2005. He navigates the subway expertly, riding it to the Nationals ballpark, where he enters the clubhouse a few hours before game time and does a chore or two. The players, who have climbed to the pinnacle of a steep athletic pyramid, know that although hard work got them there, they have extraordinary aptitudes because they are winners of life’s lottery. Major leaguers, all of whom understand what it is to be gifted, have been uniformly and extraordinarily welcoming to Jon, who is not.

Except he is, in a way. He has the gift of serenity, in this sense:

The eldest of four siblings, he has seen two brothers and a sister surpass him in size, and acquire cars and college educations. He, however, with an underdeveloped entitlement mentality, has been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity.

You get the idea.

Raising children is the most difficult and the most important thing human beings can do. It’s challenging and agonizing even in the most ideal scenarios, because that’s what life is in our fallen world. But there’s also the joy and the laughter and the love!

In Pope Leo’s much discussed encyclical about artificial intelligence, he used the framework of a civilization of love, beloved by John Paul II, to emphasize how we can use AI for good. We can never know what such a thing is if we don’t let ourselves love and be loved amid all the suffering. There, we will encounter the most life-giving of surprises. I know that sounds Pollyannish. But if you’ve lived it — if you are living it — you know it’s true. You know it through blood, sweat, and nearly every kind of uncertainty. And you thank God for the honor of living this life.

Speaking of Iceland, actress Patricia Heaton (probably best known for her role on Everybody Loves Raymond) memorably took on CBS News for gushingly reporting on the status of the condition there: “Iceland isn’t actually eliminating Down syndrome. They’re just killing everybody that has it. Big difference.” In an interview at the time, Heaton told me:

People are surprised when I express to them the percentage of terminations that happen around the world when parents are informed of a Down syndrome diagnosis. People are surprised by the high percentage of those who choose to abort.

But this has been going on for a very long time. Many years ago, I read an article in The New York Times about how the testing was getting more accurate and earlier to detect people with Down syndrome, and the reporter said how this was good news for parents. . . . At the very least, this is insensitive to talk about it as good news for anyone who has Down syndrome, or has children with Down syndrome. . . . The more advanced any kind of testing becomes, the more people could be targeted with other issues, or what people perceive as issues. That’s part of the problem here.

Here’s a sweet video that shows some of the beauty of young people with Down syndrome.

Toward Normalizing Life

While I was putting this edition of The Lifeline together, a friend recalled a recent visit to a college campus where a student who was legally blind showed her around. Afterward, the student thanked her for treating him normally. She did because he is normal. Perfectly imperfect, as we all are.

People Magazine Covers Darcy and Her Children

To say I was shocked to see Darcy Olsen featured in People would be quite the understatement. I’ve known Darcy since we were kids in D.C. — she at Cato, me at Heritage. We published her often in the early years of National Review Online, where she wrote about childcare policy. She’s living and breathing childcare policy now. As the People headline put it: “Single Woman Became a Foster Parent at 39. After Fostering 10 Kids and Adopting 4, She’s Hoping to Pay it Forward.” From the profile:

She recalls being “terrified” during her first experience fostering a baby. On her very first day as a licensed foster mom, Olsen was called to pick up a newborn at the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

“She’d spent her first two weeks of life on a morphine drip,” says Olsen. “I walked into the hospital, saw a small chapel and fell to my knees. I prayed three prayers: one for the baby, one for her mother and one for me — that I’d be enough . . . because I was who there was.”

When she finally held the baby for the first time, Olsen remembers letting go of what a “family was supposed to look like.” There was no handbook about how to be a foster mom — instead, Olsen just brought the little one home.

“The wild ride never stopped. And neither did the love I didn’t see coming,” she says.

When People isn’t covering celebrity gossip, it has often been a fierce advocate of assisted suicide. The magazine helped make the doctor-assisted death of young Brittany Maynard in 2014 a glamorous propaganda campaign for the culture of death. Seeing the Olsen family in People is therefore encouraging. The fact is that pop culture — even dinosaurs like People — remains influential. If seeing and reading about Darcy and her children — and the Center for the Rights of Abused Children she founded — challenges and inspires, well that can save and change the lives of children who might otherwise be forgotten.

Other Things

From Alliance Defending Freedom: “Diocese, pregnancy center ask appeals court to protect right to hire consistent with faith”

Ericka Andersen: “Tearing apart a tiny person”

Liam Siegler: “Why Some Men Want Abortion”

Upcoming & Until Next Time

Applications for the Richard John Neuhaus Fellowship at the Ethics and Public Policy Center are due on July 3.

What creative pro-life initiatives are you seeing in your community? Send me an e-mail at klopez@nationalreview.com.

God bless you and the lives you hold most dear. And the lives who need our prayers the most.