The jury in the Lindsay Clancy trial sent a note to the judge Friday as deliberations stretched into a second day in the closely watched Massachusetts case.
The nine women and three men asked to see two bags of pills that were entered into evidence, along with the knife Clancy used in her suicide attempt after killing her three young children.
The request could be significant as jurors are revisiting evidence tied to Clancy’s mental state and medication use — key pieces of evidence her defense has brought up.
Clancy has admitted to murdering her three young children but argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time.
This is a breaking news story. Stay with The Daily Wire for updates as they unfold.

Lindsay Clancy ‘said that she heard a male voice ordering her … to kill her children,’ psychologist tells jurors

Lindsay Clancy Jury Asks Judge For Another Look At 3 Key Pieces Of Evidence

Court

Lindsay Clancy

Murder

postpartum depression

As Lindsay Clancy&#8217;s murder trial moves through a Massachusetts courtroom, the country is talking about postpartum psychosis. It&#8217;s a conversation I know well, and something important is missing.
Eleven years ago, I lived the illness now being argued over in a court of law. I had given birth to my second child five and a half months prior. I was a registered nurse and had been seen by health care professionals throughout both pregnancies. And I had never once been taught that postpartum psychosis could happen to me.
Neither had my husband. When I became severely ill, he didn&#8217;t know the term. He just knew something was terribly wrong. After days of almost no sleep, I grew increasingly energetic and hyper-religious. Then came paranoia, hallucinations, delusions. I lost touch with reality.
My husband called 911. That decision may have saved my life.
I spent two weeks in a psychiatric unit with a 24-hour sitter. Yet after all that, when I was discharged, there was no collaborative planning meeting with my family. There was no warm handoff to a perinatal specialist. I followed up with my obstetrician because I understood the importance — not because any system made sure I did.
I recovered. Saying that matters, because cases like mine rarely make the news. Postpartum psychosis enters the national conversation almost exclusively through tragedy. Clancy&#8217;s case, in which her attorney plans to argue insanity tied to severe postpartum illness, is only the latest example.
By reducing the Lindsay Clancy trial to viral commentary and dramatic courtroom spectacle, we trade genuine horror for spectator entertainment while missing the entire point of postpartum psychosis advocacy. This is not advocacy for murder, but for prevention — a call for families and providers to recognize warning signs and deliver critical psychiatric care before an emergency becomes an unfathomable tragedy. Most postpartum psychosis stories don&#8217;t end the way hers did. Survivors are all around us. Our experience belongs at the center of this conversation, and so do the lessons it can teach.
First, awareness has to happen before tragedy — not after.
Families cannot recognize an illness they&#8217;ve never been told exists. A person in psychosis often doesn&#8217;t know she&#8217;s ill, which makes educating partners and extended family just as urgent as educating the patient. Health care professionals across every discipline that touches a new mother — obstetrics, pediatrics, emergency medicine, primary care — need training to recognize warning signs and respond fast. A trial can produce accountability and, to some degree, raise awareness. It cannot produce prevention.
Second, the gaps in our prevention system are bigger than any single case or verdict can show.
After a devastating outcome, it’s easy to point to the one moment someone should have acted differently. Accountability matters. But fixating on individual decisions in one case avoids a harder truth: our maternal mental health care system is fragmented by design.
Gaps exist in education, screening, recognition, emergency response, access to specialized care, and continuity of care. Even our definition of “postpartum” contributes to the problem. It implies that the problem fits neatly inside a six-week or three-month period after delivery. My crisis did not. Other women with later symptoms may not believe it can be happening to them.
Systemic failures are playing out case by case. A trial, however closely watched, will not address most of them.
Third, survivors need to be front and center. We know what the warning signs looked like before anyone else recognized them. We know what helped, what was missing, what our families needed, and what recovery looks like once the crisis has passed. Our stories aren&#8217;t a substitute for clinical expertise. They are an essential part of it — and they&#8217;re largely absent from the news coverage of a murder trial.
The next time the country pays attention to postpartum psychosis, it shouldn’t be because of another tragedy or verdict. We already know enough to do better: listen to survivors, educate families before symptoms appear, equip health care professionals across every specialty that sees new mothers, and strengthen continuity of care. Make maternal mental health education routine — not an afterthought delivered in a hospital hallway or reconstructed later in a courtroom.
The goal should never be simply to understand what went wrong after a catastrophe. The goal should be preventing the next one.
***
Kristina Dulaney, RN, PMH-C, is a postpartum psychosis survivor and the founder and executive director of Cherished Mom, a nonprofit organization dedicated to perinatal mental health awareness, postpartum psychosis advocacy, and ending maternal suicide.

Close-up little hand of child baby holding hand of mother, A newborn holds on to mom’s, dad’s finger, Love and relationship with infant, Care and support, Dreaming and protection

I Survived Postpartum Psychosis — What Nobody Warned Me About

DW Opinion

Motherhood

Post-partum psychosis

On Thursday afternoon, jurors started deliberating the fate of Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of murdering her three young children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan.
Following closing arguments from the state and defense teams earlier in the day, the jury was sent back to start deliberations at around 12:45 p.m. local time inside the Plymouth, Massachusetts, courthouse.
According to reporters inside the courtroom, the jury consists of nine women and three men. The forewoman has been described as an older woman with gray hair and glasses, according to CNN. An additional three women and three men are serving as alternates.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Breaking: Lindsay Clancy&#8217;s deliberating jury has been randomly selected. It consists of NINE women and THREE men. (3 women, 3 men selected as alternates). The foreperson is an older woman. <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/WBZ?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WBZ</a>
— Kristina Rex (@KristinaRex) <a href="https://x.com/KristinaRex/status/2093012193008578750?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2026</a></blockquote>
One of the female jurors was &#8220;wiping her eyes during closing arguments,&#8221; and another female juror &#8220;nodded when a psychiatrist testified Clancy’s choice to not take a certain medication was reasonable &#8216;in her mind,'&#8221; CNN reported.
The gender of the jurors is particularly of note since the defense team has argued that Clancy, who has admitted to strangling her three children, should not be held criminally liable for her actions because she was suffering postpartum psychosis when she committed the crimes. The injection of the postpartum element has garnered a shocking amount of support and sympathy for Clancy in the online space, mostly from women.
On Thursday, the judge <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-hands-lindsay-clancy-jury-a-new-option-at-the-eleventh-hour?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Judge+Hands+Lindsay+Clancy+Jury+A+New+Option+At+The+Eleventh+Hour">allowed</a> jurors to consider lesser offenses, including second-degree murder or manslaughter, when deliberating Clancy’s fate. The former labor and delivery nurse also faces three first-degree murder charges, which carry a life sentence without parole. 
If convicted of second-degree murder, Clancy would face a life sentence with the possibility of parole. A manslaughter conviction is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
During closing arguments, Clancy&#8217;s defense team painted the defendant as a &#8220;darn good mother&#8221; who was mistreated by the health care system. The state said Clancy was indeed suffering mentally, but never suffering from psychosis. She was planning on killing herself and decided to take her children with her and methodically planned out the murders, the prosecution argued.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/judge-hands-lindsay-clancy-jury-a-new-option-at-the-eleventh-hour?topStoryPosition=undefined&amp;author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=2&amp;row=1&amp;rowHeadline=Top+Stories&amp;rowType=Top+Stories&amp;title=Judge+Hands+Lindsay+Clancy+Jury+A+New+Option+At+The+Eleventh+Hour">Judge Hands Lindsay Clancy Jury A New Option At The Eleventh Hour</a>

Jury Deliberations Begin In Lindsay Clancy Case. Here’s What We Know About The Jurors.

Jury Deliberations Begins In Lindsay Clancy Case. Here’s What We Know About The Jurors. 

Children

Crime

Jury

The judge overseeing the Lindsay Clancy trial formally gave jury instructions on Thursday, allowing jurors to consider lesser offenses, including second-degree murder or manslaughter.
At the start of the trial, Clancy, who has admitted to fatally strangling her three young children, was facing three counts of first-degree murder, which carry a life sentence. Clancy&#8217;s defense team argued that jurors should be allowed to consider second-degree murder or manslaughter, while the state objected. Judge William Sullivan ultimately agreed to give the manslaughter instruction.
First-degree murder means Clancy intentionally killed her children with “deliberate premeditation” — or, under the prosecution’s other theory, with “extreme atrocity or cruelty.” First-degree murder in Massachusetts is punishable by life in prison without parole. For a second-degree murder conviction, the jury would have to find that Clancy intentionally killed her children, but without the first-degree conditions; this would come with a life sentence with the possibility of parole. A manslaughter conviction would require jurors to find that Clancy caused her children’s deaths through “wanton or reckless” conduct. This is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Law professor and legal expert Jonathan Turley reacted to the late addition of the manslaughter option on Thursday, posting on X, &#8220;I remain mystified how strangling three children could be manslaughter rather than murder in the Clancy case. It is an effort to have the sentence drive the verdict. It is akin to the demand of the Queen of Hearts for &#8216;sentence first, verdict afterwards.&#8217;”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
I remain mystified how strangling three children could be manslaughter rather than murder in the Clancy case. It is an effort to have the sentence drive the verdict. It is akin to the demand of the Queen of Hearts for “sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) <a href="https://x.com/JonathanTurley/status/2092959544431321248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2026</a></blockquote>
Clancy is accused of murdering her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. During the trial, it was established that Clancy strangled the children with exercise bands, one after the other.
Though she’s pleaded not guilty to the murder charges, her defense team’s strategy effectively establishes that she killed the kids. Her defense is arguing that Clancy should not be held criminally liable for their deaths due to reasons of insanity, specifically postpartum psychosis.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/patrick-clancy-breaks-silence-on-conspiracy-theories-surrounding-childrens-deaths?author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Patrick+Clancy+Breaks+Silence+On+Conspiracy+Theories+Surrounding+Children’s+Deaths">Patrick Clancy Breaks Silence On Conspiracy Theories Surrounding Children’s Deaths</a>

Judge Hands Lindsay Clancy Jury A New Option At The Eleventh Hour

Judge Hands Lindsay Clancy Jury A New Options At The Eleventh Hour

Judge

TikTok Parents

It’s Time To Mansplain Parenting To TikTok Moms Who Resent Their Own Kids

mansplaining

Parenting

TikTok

TikTok parenting

Patrick Clancy finally responded to wild online conspiracy theories — which have been peddled by influencers and celebrities — that tie him to the murders of his three young children, despite his ex-wife Lindsay Clancy acknowledging that she committed the crimes.
On Tuesday, Patrick released a statement putting those who are spreading such false theories &#8220;on notice.&#8221;
“The facts are indisputable: Patrick Clancy has suffered an unspeakable and unimaginable loss,&#8221; attorney Howard Cooper, with Todd &amp; Weld, said in a statement on behalf of Patrick. &#8220;Unfortunately, the tragedy Patrick has experienced has been compounded by patently false, defamatory, and injurious public statements.&#8221;
&#8220;The individuals making those statements — from minor influencers to major celebrities — should be on notice that their despicable actions and false, defamatory statements have caused real life consequences to the health and safety of Patrick and his family,&#8221; the statement added.
Hundreds of <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@kourtney.skyles/video/7672439659934272781?_r=1&amp;_t=ZT-98nQ2AE3HW1">videos</a> on <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@marriedtoalunatic/video/7670924442909920525?_r=1&amp;_t=ZT-98nQjOuw4Gj">TikTok</a>, which have racked up millions of views, tie Patrick to the murders. One theory claims without evidence that he was the &#8220;male voice&#8221; Lindsay supposedly heard telling her to kill the children, while others falsely claim Patrick murdered the children himself.
Actress and former reality star Lisa Rinna posted a video online recently claiming her therapist agreed with her that it was Patrick who strangled the kids to death.
&#8220;Alright he did it. Patrick did it,&#8221; Rinna said. &#8220;Patrick&#8217;s the one who did it, not Lindsay. Patrick did it, because, ya know, I also heard that women typically don&#8217;t strangle &#8230; that isn&#8217;t what a woman would do, they don&#8217;t strangle.&#8221;
&#8220;I was actually in therapy today, and my therapist and I were talking about it &#8230; and she looks at me and she goes, &#8216;He did it.&#8217; I was like, wow, yeah!'&#8221; Rinna added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Lisa Rinna claims Lindsay Clancy didn’t kill her three children because “women don’t strangle.” She says her therapist told her that women “poison” and that Patrick Clancy killed the children <a href="https://x.com/hashtag/RHOBH?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RHOBH</a> <a href="https://t.co/WGe6ftOJCB">pic.twitter.com/WGe6ftOJCB</a>
— Dorinda Deadly (@dorindadeadly) <a href="https://x.com/dorindadeadly/status/2089853927801950362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 18, 2026</a></blockquote>
Lindsay has not denied that she murdered her three children, 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan. Though she&#8217;s pleaded not guilty to the murder charges, her defense team&#8217;s strategy effectively establishes that she killed the kids. Her defense is specifically arguing that Lindsay should not be held criminally liable for fatally strangling her children due to reasons of insanity.
 Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-most-shocking-moments-from-the-lindsay-clancy-trial?author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=4&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Most+Shocking+Moments+From+The+Lindsay+Clancy+Trial">The Most Shocking Moments From The Lindsay Clancy Trial</a>

Patrick Clancy describes ex-wife’s mental health struggles leading up to children’s deaths in her murder trial

Patrick Clancy Breaks Silence On Conspiracy Theories Surrounding Children’s Deaths

Patrick Clancy Breaks Silence About Conspiracies Surrounding Children’s Deaths 

Celebrities

Conspiracy Theory

trial

Women

TikTok has banned a video — citing a &#8220;violation of Community Guidelines&#8221; — that challenges the narrative suggesting that Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis when she killed her three young children.
Very few people appear to have mixed feelings about the murder trial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy: most either believe that she&#8217;s guilty and knew exactly what she was doing, or that she was out of her mind due to postpartum psychosis and did not fully comprehend her own actions. But it&#8217;s the ones who have declared their support for Clancy — even taking to social media to claim that her husband was the guilty one — who were the target of the video in question.
Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt laid out the case in a video posted across multiple platforms on Sunday, arguing that the wave of people defending Clancy were suffering from &#8220;mass psychosis&#8221; — and he traced its origins to well before the Clancy trial, tracing the origins instead to the COVID-19 pandemic and the rules that must be obeyed but never questioned.
<div style="max-width: 728px; margin: 0 auto;">
<iframe style="aspect-ratio: 16/9; max-width: 100%; width: 100%; margin: 20px auto 5px; border: 0;" src="https://player.mux.com/ava4sleMasJ7k5phgZjt02KNwqE02L5lQS?metadata-video-content-type=embed_video&amp;metadata-video-id=6718355e-a016-4046-8c24-348a408348dd&amp;metadata-video-stream-type=on-demand&amp;metadata-video-title=2026-8-25%20Spencer%20Pratt%20Challenges%20Clancy%20Narrative%20&amp;poster=https%3A%2F%2Fdailywireplus-v2.imgix.net%2Fimages%2Fembedded-videos%2F1c04d114-07f0-43a9-ad78-458230fbfe29.jpg&amp;autoplay=false&amp;accent-color=%23DB3D3B&amp;primary-color=%23ffffff&amp;secondary-color=%23000000" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Credit: @spencerpratt/X.com
</div>
&#8220;Our institutions completely eviscerated their own reputation and dignity,&#8221; Pratt said, adding, &#8220;If you went paddleboarding, alone in the middle of the ocean, you needed to be arrested for killing Grandma. But of course, if you riot with 500,000 people, that&#8217;s totally fine, because viruses take a timeout when it comes to social justice.&#8221;
The constant bombardment of narratives that objectively did not make sense, Pratt said, did more than breed mistrust: they rewired the way people processed information — and even reality. Every tragedy started to look like a conspiracy — and people who fed on conspiracy quickly capitalized on that for profit.
He pointed to the &#8220;fans&#8221; who&#8217;d emerged when Luigi Mangione gunned down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood — and then pivoted to address Clancy. In her case, he said, it was a mass hijacking of maternal instinct and unconditional love &#8220;reallocated towards whatever group the algorithm has designated as the vulnerable class.&#8221;
Instead of feeling empathy for the three small children who were strangled to death by their own mother — or for the father who came home with takeout for dinner and discovered his babies unresponsive and near death — the empathy was being directed solely toward the woman whose actions had been the source of that pain.
Popular movies and television shows had primed the population for the redirection of empathy, taking objectively awful characters — like a chemistry teacher who became a drug kingpin and destroyed his own family — and making them sympathetic.
Disney’s “Maleficent” held up a character who embodied evil for the sake of evil in the original “Sleeping Beauty” and portrayed her as the betrayed lover who only took the wrong path because she was in pain. “Wicked” turned the good-vs-evil narrative on its head. “Dexter” made a wide audience identify with a sociopathic serial killer. And those are just a few examples among thousands, all designed to qualify — and thus minimize — objective evil, making it more difficult to identify.
While that trend is certainly problematic, it’s also protected as free speech and free expression. The real problem arises when challenges to the narrative are censored — or, in the case of COVID, targeted as “misinformation.”
TikTok moved to do just that when the platform banned Pratt’s video — which also should have been protected as free speech and expression.
“Child-murderer supporters on TikTok are mass-reporting my video on the Clancy insanity. It&#8217;s wild to see the allergic reaction people have to truth. It&#8217;s like when a demon gets sprayed with holy water,” Pratt responded on Tuesday.

Nurse practitioner who treated Lindsay Clancy testifies about Duxbury mother’s desperation to improve amid postpartum struggles

TikTok Nixes Video That Challenges Popular Narrative Around Lindsay Clancy

TikTok Nixes Video That Challenges Preferred Narrative Around Lindsay Clancy

Media

murder trial

Politics

Social Media

Spencer Pratt

Lindsay Clancy allegedly never told anyone about hearing a male voice instructing her to kill her children until after she fatally strangled 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan.
Legal experts have highlighted this timing as a major hole in the Clancy team&#8217;s defense claims. As highlighted by The Daily Wire&#8217;s &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/thats-so-criminal">That&#8217;s So Criminal</a>&#8221; host Lynden Blake, no witnesses from either the prosecution or defense have testified that Clancy told them about hearing this male voice before the murders, potentially undermining the psychosis defense that would deem Clancy not criminally responsible for the murders.
&#8220;We&#8217;ve heard from multiple people that after the murders, Lindsay said there was a male voice telling her to kill her kids, and if she didn&#8217;t kill her kids, they wouldn&#8217;t be safe. Here&#8217;s the problem: it is that male voice that witnesses on both sides are saying made her act on her intrusive thoughts that we know she was having before the murders,&#8221; Blake explained. &#8220;And the defense says this male voice is a critical piece of evidence — but no one knew about the voice until after the murders?&#8221;
Obviously, Clancy could have heard the voice and never told anyone, but the glaring omission before the murders &#8220;leaves a lot of doubt,&#8221; Blake said.
Blake also noted that the burden of proof is on the prosecution here. &#8220;They have to prove that Lindsay Clancy acted criminally when she killed her three children, and that&#8217;s a strange and hard thing to do,&#8221; she said.
Clancy&#8217;s then-husband Patrick testified during the trial that about a week after the murders, Clancy called him from the hospital and told him she had heard a man’s voice telling her that if she did not “do it now” she would lose her chance. Patrick claimed she had never previously told him she was hearing a male voice.
Additionally, hospital chaplain Sheila Cavanaugh testified that on January 31, exactly one week after the killings, Clancy told her about a persistent male voice that said neither she nor her children would be safe if she did not follow its command. Cavanaugh said Lindsay mentioned the voice during several subsequent meetings, although prosecutors pointed out that none of those claims appeared in Cavanaugh’s contemporaneous notes.
According to Clancy and witnesses, the former labor and delivery nurse was suffering mentally after giving birth to her third child, Callan. Clancy was put on more than a dozen psychiatric medications in the months leading up to the murders. Her family, including her former husband, has described Clancy as a good and loving mother before her postpartum symptoms with Callan.
Clancy, 36, is facing three counts of first-degree murder for the children&#8217;s deaths.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-most-shocking-moments-from-the-lindsay-clancy-trial?author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+Most+Shocking+Moments+From+The+Lindsay+Clancy+Trial">The Most Shocking Moments From The Lindsay Clancy Trial</a>

The Major Hole In Lindsay Clancy’s Defense

There is something about the public response to Lindsay Clancy that I cannot stop thinking about.
It isn’t the question the jury is being asked to decide. I don’t know whether Clancy met the legal standard for criminal responsibility when she killed her three children, and I am not interested in pretending that watching a trial from afar qualifies me to answer that question.
I am interested in us.
I am interested in the enormous movement of sympathy that has developed around this woman.
Supporters have gathered outside the courthouse dressed in pink. Rallies have been organized on her behalf. Social media is filled with women passionately defending her and talking about the failures of maternal mental-health care. A fundraiser for Clancy’s parents — who have reportedly depleted substantial resources relocating and supporting their daughter throughout the case — has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.
And I keep coming back to one question: Why do so many women seem to identify so deeply with Lindsay Clancy?
I want to be very careful because I know something about postpartum mental illness. After the birth of my daughter Grace, I experienced postpartum psychosis.
I know that it is real. I know that a woman’s mind can become frighteningly unlike her own after childbirth. I know that postpartum mental illness can be far more serious than being tired, overwhelmed, or “having the baby blues.” Women experiencing psychiatric crises after childbirth need to be taken seriously. They need competent medical care. Their families need to know what warning signs to look for. And women need to be able to say, without shame, when something is terribly wrong.
So I have no interest in minimizing postpartum psychosis in order to make a point about Lindsay Clancy.
But we are increasingly unwilling to make a distinction. Mental illness may affect a person&#8217;s culpability for an act. It does not change the moral nature of the act itself.
Cora was five years old. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. Their mother killed them.
That last fact is not actually in dispute in the courtroom. The question being litigated is whether Lindsay Clancy was criminally responsible for what she did. Her defense argues that severe mental illness, including postpartum psychosis, rendered her incapable of criminal responsibility. Prosecutors argue otherwise. That is the question the jury must answer.
But whatever that jury decides, three innocent children were killed. And somehow, in much of the cultural conversation surrounding this case, those children are beginning to feel almost peripheral.
The rallies are for Lindsay. The pink shirts are for Lindsay. The viral posts are about Lindsay.
The impassioned defenses are about what Lindsay was going through, what Lindsay’s doctors failed to recognize, what medications Lindsay was taking, whether Lindsay was adequately supported, whether Lindsay was sleeping, whether Lindsay was overwhelmed. Those may all be important questions.
But I keep wondering: What about the children?
Perhaps our response should not surprise me. After all, American culture has spent more than 50 years precisely developing this moral reflex.
When a woman is pregnant and frightened, we are taught to begin with her circumstances. Is she financially stable? Does she have support? Is the father involved? Is another child going to derail her education? Is she emotionally capable of parenting? Did she want to be pregnant? Is she overwhelmed? Is she depressed? Is motherhood more than she believes she can bear?
And somewhere along the way, the circumstances of the mother become so enormous that the humanity of the child nearly disappears.
The child becomes secondary to the crisis.
Eventually, we don’t simply say that the mother’s suffering deserves compassion. We say that her suffering can justify the intentional killing of her child.
That is abortion.
And I wonder whether 50 years of making that argument has formed us more profoundly than we realize.
I am not arguing that compassion for Lindsay is wrong. Christians, in particular, should never be afraid of extending compassion to someone who has committed even the most horrifying act. Mercy is not something we reserve for people whose sins are socially acceptable.
What concerns me is something different. We have become extraordinarily practiced at looking at a dead child and asking first what his or her mother was going through.
And abortion taught us how to do that.
For decades, the defense of abortion has depended on shifting the moral center of the story away from the human being who dies and toward the human being experiencing the crisis.
The mother’s suffering becomes the justification. But suffering does not make killing good. Being unsupported does not make killing good. Being frightened does not make killing good. Being poor does not make killing good. Being abandoned does not make killing good. And being mentally ill does not somehow transform the killing of an innocent human being into a morally good act.
Mental illness can matter enormously when we ask a different question: How responsible was this person for what she did? That is an important question. It is one our criminal justice system must take seriously. But it is not the same question as: Was what happened to these children wrong?
Of course it was.
We seem increasingly unable to separate those two conversations. We believe that if we call an act objectively wrong, we have somehow forfeited compassion for the person who committed it. Or we believe that if we acknowledge someone’s suffering, we must soften our description of what that suffering led her to do. We don’t.
Compassion should change how we respond to the woman. It should not change how we describe what happened to the child. That principle matters far beyond the Clancy case.
A woman seeking an abortion may be terrified. She may have been abandoned by her child&#8217;s father. She may not know how she will pay her rent. She may already have several children at home. She may have just received a devastating prenatal diagnosis. She may be depressed. She may feel utterly alone.
Every one of those circumstances should move us toward her. Feed her. House her. Sit beside her. Pay her bills. Help her find medical care. Hold her while she cries. Help her raise her child if necessary.
Her suffering should dictate the depth of our response to her. It cannot dictate the value of her child. That is the distinction our abortion culture erased. And perhaps that is why something about the response to Lindsay Clancy feels so familiar.
Women hear about a mother who was struggling, frightened, mentally unwell and overwhelmed, and something in us immediately moves toward her suffering. That instinct, by itself, is beautiful. But we have been culturally conditioned to take another step.
We allow the mother’s suffering to become the center of the moral universe until the child she has lost, or the child whose life she has taken, becomes almost invisible.
Cora, Dawson and Callan cannot become invisible. We can demand better postpartum mental-health care in their names. We can acknowledge that their mother may have been gravely ill. We can pray for Lindsay. We can even hope that the justice system takes every legitimate fact about her mental condition into consideration.
None of that requires us to forget where the greatest irreversible harm occurred. Three children went to bed on January 24, 2023, in the home where they were supposed to be safest. They will never get to grow up.
Whatever happens to Lindsay Clancy now, there will be doctors, attorneys, advocates, family members, and strangers fighting over what should happen to her next.
There is no next chapter for Cora.
There is no next chapter for Dawson.
There is no next chapter for Callan.
Perhaps that is what bothers me most about the extraordinary public identification with their mother.
For more than 50 years, we have been told that compassion requires us to understand why a woman might kill her child. Maybe it is time to remember that compassion also requires us to mourn the child who was killed.
***
Abby Johnson is CEO and Founder of And Then There Were None and ProLove Ministries.

Duxbury Murder

What The Support For Lindsay Clancy Reveals About The Abortion Debate

Abortion

Human Dignity

On Friday, the defense rested in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy, who has admitted to strangling her three young children to death. Closing arguments are expected early next week, after which the case will go to the jury.
The 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse is on trial for three counts of first-degree murder in the January 2023 deaths of her children at the family&#8217;s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy’s children were 5 years old, 3 years old, and 8 months old. She has pleaded not guilty.
The case has become a lightning rod with the public, largely because Clancy&#8217;s defense argues that she had postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings. Clancy&#8217;s defense team is relying on what’s commonly referred to as the insanity defense to argue that she was not criminally responsible because of her mental state. The state says Clancy was aware of what she was doing when she killed her children.
Here are the most shocking moments from the trial so far:
<h3>The 911 call</h3>
One of the most emotional moments of the trial came when jurors heard Patrick Clancy’s frantic 911 call after he returned home and discovered his three children had been strangled.
The call has not been released to the public after the judge granted Patrick’s request to keep the recording private, meaning jurors and those inside the courtroom were among the only people to hear it. During the call, Patrick could be heard searching for his children before discovering them in the basement and screaming that “she killed the kids.”
The recording prompted tears and visible distress in the courtroom, with Lindsay Clancy herself sobbing as she listened. Several jurors were visibly shaken, and the judge called a recess.
<h3 class="mol-para-with-font">&#8216;Go to God&#8217;</h3>
A state psychiatrist delivered chilling testimony about what Clancy said happened as she killed her children, telling the court that she <a href="https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16070853/Lindsay-Clancys-chilling-final-words-children-revealed-trial.html">said</a> “Go to God” repeatedly as she strangled her 3-year-old son, Dawson, with an exercise band.
Dr. Avram Mack testified that Clancy told him she had heard a male voice telling her, “You should kill the kids. This is your last chance so you can kill yourself,” before she took Dawson to the basement and killed him, then went on to strangle her other two children.
Mack said he believed Clancy was capable of being held criminally responsible for the killings, arguing that she acted “methodically” when she killed her three children before attempting to take her own life.
<h3>Bloodied Baby Clothes</h3>
Another shocking moment occurred when prosecutors displayed the bloodied clothing the children were wearing on the night they were killed.
Jurors were shown 5-year-old Cora’s pajamas and pink robe, 3-year-old Dawson’s long-sleeve shirt and dinosaur underwear, and 8-month-old Callan’s red snowflake onesie. The clothing was presented to the jury in evidence bags alongside the exercise bands Clancy used to strangle the children.
Clancy did not look up as the evidence was displayed, while the courtroom was visibly shaken.
<h3>Clancy&#8217;s 57 bpm Heart Rate</h3>
Clancy had a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/chilling-testimony-reveals-lindsay-clancys-physiological-state-at-time-of-child-killings?author=Amanda+Prestigiacomo&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=3&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Chilling+Testimony+Reveals+Lindsay+Clancy’s+Physiological+State+At+Time+Of+Child+Killings">heart rate of just 57 beats per minute</a> just before, or potentially as, she started to fatally strangle her three young children.
Testimony from digital forensic specialist Ian Whiffin revealed that Clancy’s Apple Watch recorded a heart rate of 57 bpm at 5:23 p.m. on the day of the killings. Prosecutors’ digital timeline appears to place the killings in the roughly 5:23-5:38 p.m. window, although the Apple Watch did not record a heart rate throughout that period.
The data offers a glimpse into Clancy’s physiological state around the time of the killings and prompted intense reaction online. Some suggested it showed Clancy’s methodical and planned approach, while others viewed it as evidence that could bolster the defense’s case that Clancy was experiencing psychosis rather than acting in a fit of rage.
<h3>Clancy Supporters</h3>
Hundreds of women have lined up outside the courthouse in support of Clancy. As highlighted by The Daily Wire, women dressed in pink held a silent vigil for her, standing in a circle for a moment of silence in Clancy&#8217;s honor.
She has also received a flood of support online from mothers who insist they relate to her mental health struggles. Clancy&#8217;s defense maintains that she suffered from postpartum psychosis, which is far less common and more serious than postpartum depression.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Supporters wave and cheer for Lindsay Clancy, who killed her 3 young children, as her defense team and family members arrive
The demonstration involved moments of silence, prayer, and applause 
<a href="https://t.co/wKii0iMWlR">pic.twitter.com/wKii0iMWlR</a>
— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) <a href="https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/2090522506566213744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 20, 2026</a></blockquote>
Clancy&#8217;s parents have <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/lindsay-clancy-parents-gofundme-reaches-nearly-1-million/">raised</a> nearly $1 million in the wake of the children&#8217;s murders.
&nbsp;

GettyImages-2289661751

The Most Shocking Moments From The Lindsay Clancy Trial

The Most Shocking Moments From The Lindsay Clancy Case 

Courts

Over the past few years, I&#8217;ve done a lot of shows talking about men: what men need to fix, where men fall short, and how men can step up. I haven&#8217;t really turned that same sort of attention toward women.
It&#8217;s time for an honest conversation. We have some things to discuss. It&#8217;s time to get your sh*t together.
Victimhood, of course, has now become the drug of choice for virtually every subgroup in the American population, and women are not an exception.
But they are not victims. Not remotely. They earn more college degrees. They have longer life expectancies. When adjusted for hours worked and time out of the workforce, they earn more than men.
So when I see women standing and protesting outside the trial of Lindsay Clancy, a woman who murdered her three young children, including a baby, I need to ask some questions, because that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re seeing now: the sense of victimhood.
There&#8217;s some empirical basis for the idea that American men are failing because they are earning fewer degrees, committing suicide at higher rates, dropping out of the workforce at higher rates, and earning less money. That&#8217;s not true of American women.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2491"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-981859 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Yet many women are addicted to the idea that they are somehow victims of the phantom patriarchy. This is the only way I can explain what the hell is happening outside the Lindsay Clancy trial. I do not understand it. What are they protesting?
Lindsay Clancy’s children were the true victims because they ended up being strangled by their mother. If Lindsay Clancy was the victim of anything, she was a victim of her mental illness.
But you don’t typically have protests against mental illness. That&#8217;s like protesting cancer, heart disease, sunshine, or wind.
These are things — often bad — that happen in life. But very rarely do people gather outside a courthouse to protest an illness. Typically, when you&#8217;re outside a courthouse protesting, you&#8217;re suggesting someone has been wronged by the system.
That&#8217;s what some women have been saying over the last few days.
Lindsay Clancy, just like every other person in the United States charged with a crime, deserves a defense. I&#8217;m even sympathetic to the mental illness defense here, as I&#8217;ve made clear.
But what in the world is going on with these women making heart hands outside the trial? What are they protesting for or against? Postpartum psychosis?
I&#8217;ve seen all these tapes of women saying they&#8217;re “just like Lindsay.” If you say you are just like Lindsay Clancy, you should immediately be put into involuntary commitment.
I think that there is an underlying message.
Let&#8217;s start with the obvious. There is an underlying idea that women are victims. This has become a trend: the idea that women are, in some sort of vague way, victims of the justice system or the American system or the patriarchy.
No women in all of human history have it better than American women. A woman named Peachy Keenan <a href="https://x.com/KeenanPeachy/status/2090602646369608067">wrote</a> on X:
<blockquote>Why are so many women sooo angry? They won. They got everything they wanted. Men have never been doing this badly, and women have never been doing this well. They make more, they have the majority of jobs, they are the majority of college graduates, (UCLA undergrad is 60% female), they make more money, have much lower rates of suicide, addiction, and alcoholism, and live longer. They won: they took over all men-only spaces, they took over the Boy Scouts, they ended men’s bathrooms, they can fly fighter planes and be in combat. Marriage is optional, divorce is no-fault, they win 99% of the custody battles, they can control fertility at will, and they can’t get drafted. We are all living in the female future they promised.</blockquote>
This is correct.
Why are women so angry? It is not economic underperformance. It is certainly not the patriarchy. It is not a lack of education or anything like that.
Yet women&#8217;s happiness has declined markedly. According to a study from PubMed Central, female happiness declined from the 1980s through 2000 and continued to decline after that.
Here is my controversial contention: The reason why so many women in American society are so angry and so much unhappier than they were in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is that so many women are single.
This does not mean all men are good or that all marriages are good. But when you look at the actual data, it shows that married women are much, much happier than single women. In fact, married moms are twice as likely to be very happy as single or childless women.
Studies say that the unhappiest group of women, by far, is unmarried women with children.
That makes sense. They don&#8217;t have a partner. They don&#8217;t have a spouse, somebody to help protect them, care for them, and take care of the kids.
If you look at men&#8217;s happiness, the same thing is true. Married men with children are the happiest men.
This is not a giant shock. Marriage is good for both men and women. Marriage makes people happier, and marriage with children makes people significantly happier. That is true for women, and it is true for men.
But we have an entire society built around the idea that marriage is an imposition on women and that women are suffering because of marriage, which is a lie.
Why do women get happier when they get married and then when they have kids?
Because men and women are different, which is the single most fundamental fact of human biology. Our brains don&#8217;t work quite the same way.
Women are driven by compassion. This is the driving evolutionary force in female biology. Why? Because women need to be compassionate toward children to keep the species functioning. They need to be there to feed and take care of children. A byproduct of that is that women are far more social than men.
Women have deep friendships, and polling data shows women are far more likely to turn to family and friends for support than men.
Women are people-oriented. Men are things-oriented.
This is why men also often end up in engineering, because men like machines. They like things.
Women like people. This is why women are overrepresented in places like nursing, and men are overrepresented in places like mechanics.
It&#8217;s also why, if you leave a man alone for the weekend, away from his wife and kids, the most likely outcome is that he will pop open a beer and watch football, but if you leave a woman alone for the weekend, away from her husband and kids, she&#8217;s probably going to phone one of her friends and go out for lunch.
If you take that in the toxic direction — where men don&#8217;t get married — men have aggressive, antisocial instincts. And when you channel those aggressive instincts away from family, men are wildly destructive. If you think of the worst men you know or have heard of, they are people who abandon all responsibility and then victimize everybody else. Men who are left to their own devices and are not socialized become nihilistic, aggressive, and gross, and they harm other people.
The female compassion instinct, channeled away from family, however, results in misdirected compassion, and that can mean sympathy for some pretty bad people.
Women want social connection. And when they can&#8217;t find a real social connection, if they go online and they find a fake social connection, that&#8217;s a pretty good substitute. Women are far more social creatures than men are.
What does that mean for protests?
There are two different types of protests. When men gather to protest, it&#8217;s usually for one of two reasons. Either they really, really, really believe in the cause, or it&#8217;s time to riot and loot and grab a TV.
Why do women show up to protest?
Because it is a gigantic way to hang out with other people in a situation of social confirmation. Thus, polarized men will turn toward destructive societal movements, and polarized women will turn toward ways they can demonstrate compassion through things like protest.
Which is what’s happening with Lindsay Clancy.

IMG_6216

The Victimhood Trap Making Women Miserable

Ben Shapiro

Opinion

Dressed in pink, and in some cases holding infants, supporters of Lindsay Clancy showed up outside the Massachusetts courtroom where she’s standing trial for strangling her three children to death.
Hundreds of women crowded outside the Plymouth Superior Court as the sun rose Thursday morning for a silent vigil. They clasped hands and stood in a circle for a moment of silence to honor Clancy. The killer has received a flood of support online from mothers who insist they relate to her mental health struggles. 
Hashtags such as “We Are All Lindsay Clancy” have been trending on social media throughout the trial as scores of women voiced their support.
“We stand in silence, united hand in hand, wearing pink, to show Lindsay Clancy the peaceful support she deserved,” a <a href="https://bodyoffbeat.wixsite.com/standinpeaceforlinds/post/organize-gathering-in-your-city">website</a> promoting the vigil says. Other flyers listed on the site promoted rallies in New York City, Phoenix, Fort Worth, and other cities around the country. 
Clancy’s defense attorney was interviewed Thursday morning and said he thought the support of the gathered crowd was “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/lindsay-clancys-lawyer-hints-at-whats-to-come-as-trial-nears-its-end">amazing</a>” for his client.
This case has national attention as arguments rage over who is to blame for the death of three innocent children, aged 5, 3, and 8 months. Some of Clancy’s supporters claim the murders are the fault of the healthcare industry pushing medication with serious side effects. Others have gone so far as to accuse Clancy’s ex-husband, Patrick, of being the true murderer and framing her for it. 
But there are also many followers of the case who believe that even if Clancy was suffering from postpartum psychosis, that’s not enough to excuse her from the consequences of her actions. They point out that if she is found “not guilty” by reason of insanity, there’s a chance she could be committed to a mental health facility for some time and could then be released. After that, she could theoretically have more children if she wanted.
Clancy pleaded not guilty to the charges of first-degree murder, but the defense has never suggested someone else murdered her children. Instead, her defense team is trying to prove she should not be held criminally liable for actions committed while taking multiple prescription drugs and suffering postpartum psychosis.

Clancy Supporters

Lindsay Clancy Supporters Send Coordinated Message Outside Murder Trial

Massachusetts

Menu