Clancy Case Should Make Pro-Lifers Rethink Absolving Mothers– thefederalist.com

In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy allegedly murdered her three young children — ages 5, 3, and 8 months — and then attempted to take her own life. As details emerged about Clancy’s mental state, postpartum struggles, and the horrific method of killing, many people began speaking about her not as a mother who had murdered her children but as a woman who had been suffering and needed compassion.

Outside the courthouse last week, women gathered — dressed in pink shirts and forming hearts with their hands — as a demonstration of their solidarity with a mother who is on trial for strangling her children. One of the women expressed sympathy and confessed, “It could be me.” A licensed therapist said, “Many of us see ourselves in Lindsay,” and described many women as “one step away” from murdering their children. Those defending Clancy have focused on how the medical system and society failed her. As a result, public sentiment is divided over whether she should be held criminally responsible for the killings.

There is nothing wrong with calling attention to psychosis or demanding accountability from the pharmaceutical industry and medical community for the misuse of potentially harmful medications. But the growing identification with Clancy raises a more pertinent question: Should compassion for a woman who has committed a violent crime lead us to acquit her for it?

That question presents an uncomfortable mirror for the pro-life movement. Should Clancy’s circumstances transform the perpetrator into a victim and, ultimately, eliminate her criminal culpability? While many conservatives answer that justice for the Clancy children should prevail, conservative culture has operated the opposite way regarding prenatal children. For decades, the pro-life movement has maintained its own category of women who participate in the killing of their children — and its response to them mirrors the rhetoric now used by those trying to excuse Clancy.