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By Melissa Fleur Afshar
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A mother of a young child with Down syndrome has weighed in on a viral debate over disability and reproductive rights in the United States—defending parents' right to choose while sharply criticizing how disability is framed in the online discourse.
Many parents, when told their unborn baby has a high risk of Trisomy 21—the chromosomal condition that causes Down syndrome—choose to terminate the pregnancy. It's a difficult reality for parents like Anna Kohl, 33, who made a different choice when pregnant with her now 4-year-old daughter, Addy.
Yet Kohl, from Oregon, told Newsweek that she remains firmly supportive of abortion rights, adding that the world is not yet equipped with the right services and attitudes to help people with disabilities thrive, making the parenting of a child with Down syndrome stressful for families that lack the required support.
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Though Kohl, from Oregon, remains "fiercely pro-choice," she has found herself at odds with another viral voice in the abortion debate, challenging the way one couple has publicly described Down syndrome while explaining their own decision to terminate a pregnancy.
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A Viral Post Rekindles a Familiar Debate
Kohl's comments come after content creator Jesse Ridgway, known to millions online as @McJuggerNuggets, recently announced that he and his wife, Ashley, had terminated a pregnancy after learning their baby had a high chance of being born with Down syndrome.
Ridgway wrote on X, in a post that quickly went viral, that the decision was "extremely traumatic" and "not made lightly." He said doctors and genetic counselors told the couple that up to 90 percent of women terminate following a similar diagnosis. Trisomy 21 occurs in roughly 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 1,100 births worldwide, according to the United Nations. Severity varies considerably, but many people with Down syndrome live full lives with the right support.
Kohl, who documents disability parenting on social media under the handle @theinclusioneffectpod, began sharing her family's story after Addy suffered a cardiac arrest at 6 months old. The account has since broadened into wider disability advocacy.
"I believe that my daughter, and everyone with Down syndrome or other medical complexities is worthy, but I also know firsthand that it is harder raising a child with additional needs," she said. "It's more expensive, time consuming, and it requires a complete lifestyle change."
In a social media video, Kohl described sitting through the same difficult conversations as the Ridgways.
"[Seeing their story online] makes me uncomfortable because my husband and I lived that. We sat in those rooms. We had those talks," she told viewers. "We were told that the doctors had bad news. We were asked repeatedly about terminating. And that bad news just turned 4 and is one of the best things that has ever happened to us."
Kohl's criticism centered not on the couple's decision but on Ridgway's online description of Down syndrome as "objectively" detrimental from a health standpoint.
"Down syndrome is not a glitch. There is no trying for better," Kohl said in her video response to Ridgway's post, calling the framing "dangerous, ableist rhetoric" delivered to a massive audience that would largely take it at face value. "There are people with Down syndrome who are listening. They're seeing you call them glitches, mistakes."
She added: "As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a debate about pro-choice and pro-life. I'll always defend the right to choose; the issue is how Ridgway chose to share unkind and untrue rhetoric [that is] already being pushed in our country."
'Both Realities Can Be True'
Kohl doesn't fault people who choose termination, arguing that the wider system gives families too few real alternatives. She has lobbied at the Oregon State Capitol for paid family caregiving policies, which she says would ultimately save taxpayers money.
"If we had accessible therapies for our kids—OT, PT, speech—if we had affordable health care, if we had livable wages and disability supports in place, more people may feel comfortable bringing a disabled child into the world, and abortion rates would naturally decrease," she told Newsweek. "For many families, having a child who is disabled is a sentence to poverty and struggling."
Ridgway spoke with Newsweek separately in June. He said the response to his initial X post had been intense in both directions. Several social media users had responded to his post, calling him and his wife "murderers."
"It was hell and hurt to be transparent, and now it's become this huge debate. We're definitely getting really severe backlash, and a lot of support as well—it's just that the backlash is way louder," he said.
For Kohl, the episode illustrates a debate she believes too often gets flattened into opposing camps, instead of being discussed in a supportive, accepting manner.
"My daughter changed our lives for the better, and it's really hard sometimes," she said. "Both can be true, just like I can be pro-choice and anti-eugenics.
"A lot of people in this argument are lacking nuance because they simply haven't lived it."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Shakeema Edwards.
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