RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Lindsay Clancy does not deny that she murdered her three young children. In her trial, which is set to wrap up in the coming days, the facts of the case are virtually undisputed : In 2023 following months of devolving mental health and attempts to secure mental health support, Clancy strangled her three children — ages five, three, and eight months — with rubber exercise chords. Shortly after, she attempted to end her own life by jumping out of the window of her family home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, and was paralyzed from the waist down.
Clancy admits to the murders, her ex-husband said when he testified on her behalf. The question at hand is whether or not Clancy — whom her lawyers say had been suffering from severe postpartum psychosis at the time of the murders — is criminally responsible for first-degree premeditated murder and deserving of a life sentence in federal prison, or should be committed to a state psychiatric facility.
In the true-crime obsessed network of internet commentary, the Clancy case has already produced thousands of hours of coverage, theorizing, and analysis. It also opened up a tricky conversation about maternal and post-natal psychiatric health, as well as the limitations of public sympathy.
Postpartum depression is defined by the Cleveland Clinic as a severe depressive mood disorder that can develop during pregnancy and up to a year after the birth of a child. Causes can relate to "hormonal, physical, emotional, financial and social changes after having a baby." Postpartum psychosis is an extreme, more rare form of postpartum disorder, characterized by symptoms including "severe agitation, confusion, feelings of hopelessness, delusions or hallucinations, rapid speech and mania," that can last weeks or months.
Even talking about the baby blues can be difficult for many women, and postpartum mental health is often a misunderstood and potentially fraught topic. This specific iteration is happening, of course, within the context of a murder trial over three children who should be alive, and the notion that Clancey may not hold the entirety of the responsibility for their deaths — be it shared with a severe mental illness, or medical and institutional failure — is being met with outrage and accusation of outright support for Clancy's actions. Editor’s picks The 250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far The 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century
This has been particularly acute among hyper-online, right-wing men. Women discussing their own experience with postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, and the mental health struggles that can follow the birth of a child, are themselves being labeled as soulless pro-baby-murder sociopaths.
The ringleader of this push is, to no one's surprise, professional far right agitator — and definitely not a doctor — Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire. Walsh went so far as to declare that postpartum depression, and consequently postpartum psychosis, is an overblown diagnosis that masks a woman's selfishness, and an unwillingness by new mothers to surrender themselves to the demands of motherhood. Walsh has spent days posting about the case, describing Clancy as a "useless woman" who expected "pampering and coddling" in order to prevent her from killing her children.
"Much of the 'depression' that parents (and not just moms) suffer after child birth is due not so much to hormones but to the fact that children, especially babies, are demanding and difficult and require us to subordinate our own needs and desires for their sake," Walsh wrote. "The more selfish you are, the more of an adjustment it's going to be."
It's worth noting that Walsh's wife, Alissa Walsh, who gave birth to the couple's six children, has had a more sympathetic view. In 2024, she responded to a fellow moms post on X about not "doing well" after giving birth with a supportive note . "Postpartum is not easy at all. Praying for you. Here to listen." Related Content ‘Crush the Communist Left’: How Charlie Kirk’s Murder Ignited a Firestorm on the Right Right-Wingers Bash Anti-Trans Lawmaker for Unwittingly Touting DEI Right-Winger at SCOTUS Rally Vows to 'Erase' Trans Ideology 'From This Earth' Josh Hawley Was An Early No-Fault Divorce Skeptic
Walsh and commentators like The Federalist's Sean Davis continue to hold an uncompromising view of Clancy as a calculated murderess. Women who dare to push back on Walsh's minimization of postpartum mental illness are — as Davis declared — "psychopaths," who need to be "institutionalized." MAGA conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec claimed that "there will be Lindsay Clancy copycats because of how the TikTok algorithm and radical feminist groups incentivize this evil behavior."
Yet a crack is forming in the right's coverage, and it's exposing the gender dynamics of the modern conservative movement. Where right wing women are coming forward to correct blatant medical misinformation, and cruel minimization of their experience, only to be met with the kind of ire typically reserved for their liberal political opponents.
"As one of the few women left in conservative media who isn't trying to live a trad wife life or peddle trad wife content — a lot of you sound so weird and mean talking about fertility, pregnancy, post partum," former The View co-host Meghan McCain wrote on X. "You're scaring the normies. And you're gonna need them in '28."
Abby Libby, a conservative influencer and mother of three, responded to Walsh by telling him that his posts were dismissive of the very real hormonal changes experienced by women after giving birth. Libby stressed that while she believed Clancy deserved the death penalty, "Your tirade against Lindsay has begun to extend in a cruel way to women who have brought life into the world and struggled."
"Sitting with my 3rd baby in 3 years, 5 weeks postpartum, finding out from Matt Walsh that the reason I'm struggling with PP...
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