Victim Culture

An influencer couple faced severe backlash last week after announcing on social media that they had decided to abort their unborn baby, having learned that the child was likely to be born with Down syndrome. The post came after the couple had announced the pregnancy just several weeks earlier, and in a very different spirit: they’d expressed how much they were looking forward to being parents, to welcoming this new child into their family.

The backlash was probably to be expected. But part of it came from the tone of the couple’s announcement. The couple, Jesse and Ashley Ridgway, emphasized the process of making the decision as “extremely traumatic.” Indeed they noted that the process involved learning more about what Down syndrome entails, both for parents and for the baby: “Down syndrome isn’t a ‘blessing,’” Jesse said. “I didn’t realize just how rough it is for the child, let alone the family.”

For lots of fans directly affected by Down syndrome, this seemed an irresponsible characterization. Those affected by the condition often live very happy and full lives, their responses countered, with family and friends feeling more blessed for getting to know and love those who have it. For the couple to dismiss those experiences so readily, and then to emphasize their own suffering as the “traumatic” experience in the midst of their baby’s life being taken, seemed a gross misappropriation of the situation.

And such a response on the part of followers does seem fair. What’s striking about the Ridgways’ decision and their mode of talking about it is the blatant inconsistency of their narrative. They “signed on” to be parents, “come what may,” they say; but only up to a certain point. Even more oddly, the couple notes near the end of the post that they’re grateful to have had the option for abortion: “Thankfully, we had a choice,” they write, the point hearkening to abortion rights advocates’ emphasis on a woman’s right to choose. That’s always been a perplexing defense of abortion, in that abortion infringes egregiously on the unborn baby’s right to choose, but what’s especially perplexing in this case is that the Ridgways don’t even try to justify their logic. “We made a difficult decision that we believe in the long-run will be beneficial for our family,” they close, staunchly. But along the way they affirm that the baby was a person, that they freely decided to end its life, and that they really did and do take responsibility for their choice – though still somehow out of love. That this may be an entirely incoherent position to occupy, intellectually, is an issue they just sidestep.

It makes for a moment where some of the confusion of our cultural values begins to show through. The ideals of freedom and dignity that the Ridgways’ story touches on arose in our culture from a metaphysical view of reality based in Christianity, with truths about God and the way he created us being the backing for our assertions about human freedom and dignity, about right and wrong, about what a life is worth. The problem is that when we lose that backing – as we have – we also lose the integrating framework for those assertions. And then we don’t have a way to comb through competing goods, for instance, or difficult decisions like the Ridgways’, from a principled stance. Thus our attachment to such ideals becomes only a sentimental one, where the decision we most want to make or that feels most convenient to make just gets attached to something that comes across as noble and celebrated: the right to choose; the “good” of our family.

Whatever frustration fans may have expressed toward the Ridgways for portraying themselves as victims, then, it may be that Jesse and Ashley weren’t totally wrong in their self-assessment. They are victims – but victims, perhaps, of a culture that has failed to instruct those living in it in clear thinking. This couple is generally a good-willed one, after all: they love their marriage, they love babies, they want to do the right thing. But we as a culture have lost the capacity to help them to do that. And as a result, both they and their baby have suffered for it.