{"id":2649213,"date":"2026-08-25T08:45:59","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-lindsay-clancy-case-should-make-pro-lifers-rethink-absolving-mothers-of-murder\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T09:45:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T13:45:30","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-lindsay-clancy-case-should-make-pro-lifers-rethink-absolving-mothers-of-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-lindsay-clancy-case-should-make-pro-lifers-rethink-absolving-mothers-of-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"Clancy Case Should Make Pro-Lifers Rethink Absolving Mothers"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-lindsay-clancy-case-should-make-pro-lifers-rethink-absolving-mothers-of-murder%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2649213&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy was accused of murdering her three young children and attempting suicide. Public reactions highlighted empathy for her, with some viewing her as a victim overwhelmed by postpartum struggles and mental health issues. This debate sparked discussions about justice and compassion, especially concerning whether her mental health should lessen her culpability. The incident also has parallels with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/trump-is-wrong-about-the-efficacy-and-resilience-of-the-pro-life-movement\/\" title=\"Trump Is Untrue About The Efficacy Of The Pro-... Movement&#039;s Resilience And Efficacy\">pro-life movement&#039;<\/a>s stance towards women who seek abortions,which historically emphasizes their victimization due to societal or medical pressures. Prominent pro-life leaders have long maintained that women are victims of circumstances and should not face criminal penalties for abortion. Conversely, Christianity teaches that all sin, including murder, stems from human depravity, and justice should be upheld regardless of external factors. Advocates warn that excusing maternal violence undermines moral order and could lead to increased violence against born children, emphasizing that true resolution lies in addressing hearts and moral principles rooted in sin and justice.Kayla Suderman, a Christian writer involved in the abolition movement, underscores the importance of moral accountability and the dangers of moral relativism in society&#8217;s approach to these issues.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy allegedly murdered her three young children \u2014 ages 5, 3, and 8 months \u2014 and then attempted to take her own life. As details emerged about Clancy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Outside the courthouse last week, women <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/us\/articles\/lindsay-clancy-fans-gather-outside-153107892.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">gathered<\/a> \u2014 dressed in pink shirts and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/boston25\/status\/2090414839302635636\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">forming hearts<\/a> with their hands \u2014 as a demonstration of their solidarity with a mother who is on trial for strangling her children. One of the women <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CollinRugg\/status\/2090473160005369897\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">expressed<\/a> sympathy and confessed, \u201cIt could be me.\u201d A licensed therapist <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/CollinRugg\/status\/2089061541903732894\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a>, \u201cMany of us see ourselves in Lindsay,\u201d and described many women as \u201cone step away\u201d 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.<\/p>\n<p>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? <\/p>\n<p>That question presents an uncomfortable mirror for the pro-life movement. Should Clancy\u2019s 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 \u2014 and its response to them mirrors the rhetoric now used by those trying to excuse Clancy. <\/p>\n<p>In 2016, Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, <a href=\"https:\/\/nrlc.org\/communications\/releases\/2016\/release033016b\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">stated<\/a>: \u201cNational Right to Life has long opposed the imposition of penalties on the woman on whom an abortion is attempted or performed.\u201d Then-National Director of Priests for Life Frank Pavone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholic.org\/news\/national\/story.php?id=68317\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">said<\/a> the pro-life movement doesn\u2019t \u201caim to imprison\u201d women. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America, together <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/opinion\/two-pro-life-women-say-no-prosecuting-women-abortions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> that they \u201cemphatically\u201d oppose \u201cprosecuting women for abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The reason for this position within the pro-life movement is similar to those defending Clancy: Women who seek abortions are victims too. According to prominent pro-life leaders, women who obtain abortions are often victims of a lack of support, cultural pressures, relationship instability, or deception from the abortion industry. Whatever the circumstances, the woman herself is generally exempt from criminal penalties for intentionally killing her preborn child.<\/p>\n<p>There is a long history of the pro-life movement promoting the idea of women being victims of abortion. John C. Willke, a formative pro-life pioneer and one of the earliest leaders of National Right to Life, <a href=\"https:\/\/aimks.org\/nrl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">wrote<\/a> in his 1985 book <em>Abortion Questions &#038; Answers<\/em> in response to a question on a Constitutional amendment: \u201cWe don\u2019t know of a single pro-life or pro-abortion leader, or church leader, or congressman, or member of Parliament in any nation, who would want [women to be punished]. The mother is the second victim; she needs help and love \u2014 not punishment. No, women would not be punished.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s no wonder that after decades of <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >prominent pro-life leaders casting women<\/a> as victims in prenatal homicide cases, some in the culture now extend the same reasoning to women accused of murdering their born children. Clancy\u2019s supporters claim she was a victim of hormones, prescription medication, depression, and even her husband framing her for the crime. Much like the pro-life view of women in abortion cases, this perspective assumes that postpartum women who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/garland-orders-crackdown-on-unruly-flight-passengers-as-mask-related-incidents-spike\/\" title=\"Garland Orders Crackdown On Unruly Flight Passengers As Mask-Related Incidents Spike\">commit violent acts<\/a> are driven by extenuating circumstances and are therefore less culpable than someone who commits the same crime without experiencing those unfortunate circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>However, abortion abolitionists have another explanation for why women commit violent crimes against their children: sin.<\/p>\n<p>Jeremiah 17:9 warns that \u201cthe heart is deceitful above all else, and desperately wicked.\u201d Jesus Christ taught that out of the heart flows evil thoughts and murder (Matthew 15:19). Fundamentally, murder is sin (Exodus 20:13). The root problem for women who murder their children \u2014 whether postnatally or prenatally \u2014 is a sin problem. Medication, poverty, an absent spouse, or hormone imbalance may affect a person\u2019s circumstances, judgment, or behavior, but they do not change the fundamental reality of human nature; they merely exacerbate what is already within a person. While secularism seeks to blame an external factor for a person\u2019s crime, Christianity rejects that diagnosis. <\/p>\n<p>As abolitionist Luke Griffo <a href=\"https:\/\/redeemercsh.org\/are-we-not-on-the-same-team\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">writes<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Christianity \u2026 sees sin as a transgression of God\u2019s holy law, which necessarily must be met with justice. \u201cSin is lawlessness\u201d (1 John 3:4). \u2026 Sin is therefore a legal reality and disobedience to specific, revealed law, which, like any genuine law, demands punishment. Therefore, the great problem man faces is neither social injustice, systemic oppression, nor governmental failure, but his own personal guilt before the God who made him and his liability to judgment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>When society rushes to acquit the guilty in the name of empathy, it invites moral collapse and defies God\u2019s moral order. Ecclesiastes 8:11 warns of this exact danger: \u201cBecause the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.\u201d\u00a0Instead, murder, regardless of why it was committed, should be punished.<\/p>\n<p>Abolitionists have warned for years that violence against born children will increase the more we normalize the killing of the youngest ones in the womb. After all, if our laws grant a mother legal immunity for intentionally killing her prenatal child, what principle prevents that same immunity from being extended to the killing of her born children? <\/p>\n<p>Maternal filicide will not be solved or handled appropriately until we reckon with the human heart, the reality of sin, and the necessity of justice. And if conservatives are bewildered by the left-wing impulse to excuse women who deliberately murder their born children, we would do well to examine our own house first.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Kayla Suderman is a Christian writer and the author of &#8220;Post-Roe Reformation.&#8221; She is also a contributing journalist and editor for the Abolition Movement, which advocates legally classifying abortion as murder and criminalizing it without exceptions.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lindsay Clancy&#8217;s 2023 crime sparks debate on compassion and justice<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4393,"featured_media":2649214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/clancy.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,33651],"tags":[36913,7355,84504,8347,36292],"class_list":["post-2649213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","category-the-western-journal","tag-legal-ethics","tag-motherhood","tag-pregnancy-rights-2","tag-pro-life","tag-reproductive-rights"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/clancy.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2649213"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2649251,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2649213\/revisions\/2649251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2649214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2649213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2649213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2649213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}