Outside the courthouse where Lindsay Clancy is being tried for the murders of her three small children, ages 5, 3, and 8 months, women are gathering. Wearing pink, they carry signs that say “Justice for Lindsay.” When Lindsay’s defense attorney appears, they cheer, telling news outlets that he is a champion, “fighting for women’s rights.” Some women brought their own children, carrying babies in slings and pushing strollers, while women online talk about how they would like to just give Lindsay a big hug and posit theories about how her husband probably did it instead.
I am tired. I’m fatigued by the ways that women work so hard to absolve each other of wrongdoing, and the ways that we, in the process, try to absolve ourselves. If you think about it and really survey everything that is being thrown at us every day on social media, women have become so obssessive about making excuses for everything that we do. It’s hormones. It’s men. It’s disobedient children. It’s a bad boss. It’s a lack of money. It’s too much money. It’s a traumatic childhood. It’s society’s expectations. The list could go on and on forever, but the bottom line is that women have become accustomed to declaring ourselves right, or at least not to blame, when we behave badly.
And even here, outside of this courtroom where witnesses are grahically describing the state of these children at their deaths; even when we are faced with the reality that Lindsay Clancy herself, her own physical person, looked into the eyes of her beautiful children as they silently pleaded with their dear mother and the life drained out of them, when we recognize that they were terrified and confused and dying in front of her, their own mama, the one who should be protecting them. Even here, she is not to be blamed.
The truth is that is doesn’t matter why she did it. It doesn’t matter what her state of mind was, how much the medical community had failed her, how much or how little her husband supported her, or how many pills she was taking. All that matters is that she is the reason her children died in such an unusually cruel and terrifying way. And she should be locked away for the rest of her life because of that.
Postpartum depression is real. Postpartum psychosis, while rare, is real. Lindsay knew she needed help. She asked for it in lots of different ways, and I believe people were trying to help her. Was she failed by medical professionals? In my opinion, yes she was. Was she a victim of her psychosis and the fact that no one was able to understand how bad things were? I believe so. It’s extremely sad. But there were much greater victims: Cora, Dawson, and Callan: three precious children who were helpless as their mother inexplicably strangled them to death, as each child watched her kill the others. Where are their supporters on the courthouse lawn? Who is carrying signs about justice for Lindsay’s babies?
Children, although we don’t like to admit it, have lost their humanity. We have lived in a culture of death long enough now that the death of babies at the hands of their mother just doesn’t shock the way it used to. That’s a hard reality, but it’s true. I implore my fellow women to wake up and realize that a godless worldview is affecting the way we process things like this. If Lindsay Clancy had murdered another woman’s children, would mothers in pink be on the lawn, holding their babies, chanting that she deserves peace, not punishment? No, they wouldn’t, but because Lindsay killed her own children, Kevin Reddington is fighting for women’s rights, not just doing his due diligence to defend his client. It’s so obvious that our culture of death has twisted our hearts inside of us and caused us to think differently about what a woman can and cannot do to her own children.
Who would have ever dreamed that Lindsay would be the hero of this story? It’s the absolute definition of a culture calling what is good evil and calling what is evil good.
There is a reckoning coming for a society like ours. When women have hearts that are this hardened by the constant messaging that says we can do no wrong, I don’t see how a culture survives. Fight against this, friend. Fight against the desire that we all have to elevate ourselves above wrongdoing, to make excuses, to champion each other in our sin. Understanding one another and sympathizing is good and right, but we can’t lose sight of truth either. When babies die at the hands of their mothers, the babies are the ones who need justice, and God is bringing it one of these days. Get ready.
