Lindsay Clancy trial fuels national debate over postpartum illness, online culture of death

Warning: This article contains descriptions of child murder and suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

The defense rested its case Aug. 21 in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy after a forensic psychiatrist testified that the former labor and delivery nurse was “clearly psychotic” when she killed her three young children in January 2023 and should not be held criminally responsible.

Beyond the courtroom, hundreds of women have rallied behind Clancy, while an online movement identifying with her has prompted a debate over whether parts of American culture increasingly minimize violence against children and embrace a culture of death.

Lindsay Clancy’s case

The testimony came on the 18th day of the trial in Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts, where jurors are weighing whether Clancy was legally responsible for the strangulation deaths of her 5-year-old daughter, Cora; 3-year-old son, Dawson; and 8-month-old son, Callan. The 36-year-old mother faces three counts of first-degree murder. 

Prosecutors say she strangled her children with exercise bands inside the family’s Duxbury home after sending her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, out to pick up dinner for the family. She then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.

Clancy has pleaded not guilty and raised a lack-of-criminal-responsibility defense, commonly known as an insanity defense. Her attorneys acknowledge she killed her children but argue that severe mental illness — including postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder — prevented her from appreciating the wrongfulness of her actions. 

Prosecutors contend that Clancy was severely depressed but not psychotic and understood what she was doing. They pointed to evidence that she researched how long the dinner errand would take and waited until she was alone with the children before killing them. 

If convicted of first-degree murder, Clancy faces mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. If jurors find her not criminally responsible because of mental illness, the state would commit her to a psychiatric facility. Under state law, a court would have to approve any future release after evaluating whether she remained mentally ill and dangerous.

Movement rallies behind Clancy

The case has become the center of an intense national debate over maternal mental health, criminal responsibility, and the public response to a mother who admits to killing her children. 

Hundreds of Clancy supporters, many of them women dressed in pink, gathered outside the courthouse Aug. 20. Some displayed messages including “Believe” and “She Needed Help” and said they hoped the case would draw attention to shortcomings in postpartum maternal health. 

Online, many of her defenders have shared personal experiences with postpartum depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Videos using phrases such as “Same, Lindsay,” in which mothers quote Clancy’s diary entries while holding their children, have also circulated widely online.

One licensed therapist said on X that the proceeding will be “one of the most significant trials of your lifetime,” adding that “many of us see ourselves in Lindsay.”

“Many of us know that we could’ve been only one step away from doing some of those horrific things,” the therapist said. 

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe page established for Clancy’s parents, Mike and Paula Musgrove, has raised more than $1 million.

The rapid growth of that online movement has prompted questions about social media’s role in encouraging women to identify personally with disturbing behavior. Allie Beth Stuckey, a Christian conservative commentator, argued that TikTok is “uniquely formulated to target women with addicting, negative, deceptive, enraging content.”

“It’s why the ‘defend Lindsay Clancy’ thing has taken off,” Stuckey wrote on X.

Pro-life voices warn of a culture of death

The intensity and language of support for Clancy have drawn criticism from some Catholic and pro-life commentators, many of whom acknowledge that postpartum depression and psychosis are serious conditions deserving compassion. At the same time, they argue that some support for Clancy has gone beyond concern and instead minimized the deaths of Cora, Dawson, and Callan — ultimately reflecting a culture that has become dangerously desensitized to violence against children. 

In an Aug. 18 podcast episode, Catholic commentator Michael Knowles connected the online reaction to the country’s support for abortion. 

“The fact that ‘women’s rights’ is now a euphemism that refers exclusively to killing your own kids should mean that we are not surprised by this,” Knowles said, adding that “half of American women overtly defend infanticide.”

Knowles also cited Mother Teresa’s warning at the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast that the widespread acceptance of a mother killing her own child undermines society’s ability to protect people from violence.

CatholicVote President and CEO Kelsey Reinhardt argued that the reaction reflects a deeper cultural problem among women.

“Women are in trouble. Deep trouble,” Reinhardt said in an Aug. 20 statement. “Feminism has destroyed the maternal protective instinct and inverted it. From the celebration of abortions to identification with a murderer of children, to socialist proclivities, real questions about female formation and life are emerging.”

CatholicVote’s Mark Houck, a pro-life leader, emphasized the children’s humanity while saying that Clancy’s culpability and state of mind are “not for us as a movement to judge.”

“All human life is sacred from the womb to the tomb,” Houck told Zeale News. “The story of Lindsay Clancy is a tragic one. The lives of her children are an unrepeatable image of God, and their loss to the world is not to be explained or justified in support of anything short of murder. We pray for her, her husband, and for her children.”

Live Action Founder and President Lila Rose also weighed in Aug. 19, arguing that concern for Clancy’s mental health should not erase questions about responsibility or overshadow the children who died.

“We should have compassion for mothers suffering from serious mental illness,” Rose wrote, but “compassion for the mentally ill cannot mean abandoning the question of responsibility.” 

Rose acknowledged that Clancy may have been suffering from psychosis but questioned whether that necessarily eliminates moral responsibility.

“Ultimately, I don’t want to live in a society where explaining evil becomes synonymous with medicalizing and excusing it,” she wrote. 

Rose said society should ensure that mothers suffering from mental illness can seek help without being treated as monsters, while also refusing to allow an adult’s suffering to eclipse the children who were killed.

“Cora, Dawson, and Callan should be here,” she wrote. “They should be alive.”

“We can have compassion for mothers and still demand accountability,” she added. “We can recognize the reality of mental illness and still believe in human responsibility. We can believe in mercy without abandoning justice. Mercy and justice must co-exist.”