In what has been one of the most dominant news stories of 2026, Lindsay Clancy has been on trial for the strangulation of her three young children. Cora, Dawson, and Callan were ages 5, 3, and 8 months, respectively, at the time of their deaths. They were adorable. They were beautiful. They were innocent. Looking at the pictures of them in the news, one can’t help but wonder how they would have spent the lives they never got to live. A truly balanced view of this case puts them first. We on the Right, me included, stand tall against infanticide and will never waver in our conviction.
Read more Taking down drones the old-fashioned way
This case, however, has met with a gigantic public reaction, complete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, much anger, and commentary in the news and on social media. Everyone sees this case through the lens of their own personal experience. Throw politics in, and you have a media circus. However, no matter what the rest of us think and say, only Clancy will ever truly know what was in her mind when she committed the murders on that fateful January evening.
The right-wing media sphere has been flabbergasted by many women’s support for Clancy. Many of these left-wing women see this case as revolving around a women’s issue since Clancy denies criminal accountability based on experiencing postpartum psychosis during the murders. Left-wing allegedly pro-women movements have produced conspiracy theories that Lindsay’s obviously innocent husband was the true murderer and set Lindsay, who has admitted to the murders, up.
The left-wing/mainstream media has subsequently been scrambling to do damage control, with CNN highlighting evidence showing that Patrick Clancy was not even home at the time of the murders. WIRED, by contrast, has attempted to legitimize this lunacy by attributing it to feelings about “the harsh realities of motherhood.”
Living with Bipolar I Disorder, I also see this case and the subsequent public reaction through the lens of my own experience, which includes a history of psychosis and about four years living at McLean Hospital, which Clancy checked herself into weeks prior to the murders. While I have never experienced hallucinations and was never a danger to others, I experienced psychotic delusions 17 years ago and understand how completely psychosis will get a grip on one’s mind.
Psychotic delusions are unwavering beliefs that are wholly inconsistent with reality. Hallucinations are sensory experiences absent external stimuli. We colloquially refer to visual hallucinations as “seeing things” and auditory hallucinations as “hearing voices.” That Lindsay has claimed to have been suffering from postpartum psychosis doesn’t make this simply a women’s issue; this is about mental health and our mental health system more generally. Given this, and that Lindsay was demonstrably experiencing mental illness to at least some degree, I see this case as emblematic of the often-fuzzy line between mental illness and criminal responsibility.
Read more The Minneapolis mass shooting was no surprise
This is why I have been very disappointed to see many on the Right get mental illness so wrong. A few instances stand out in my mind. Former communications director for VP Mike Pence and prominent conservative podcaster Katie Miller posted on X that “Any mother that kills her own children is by definition psychotic; Lindsay is no exception.” In fact, psychosis is not the only reason a mother may commit infanticide. Miller seems to conflate the idea of ‘evil’ or the derogatory concept ‘crazy’ with the term ‘psychosis,’ which is a medical term for a class of symptoms of mental illness.
Sean Davis, CEO of The Federalist, has called people who support Lindsay “psychopaths.” Just because these women believe Lindsay and that postpartum psychosis can exempt someone from criminal responsibility does not make them psychopaths. Merely having sympathy for Lindsay does not in any way detract from the horrors of the crime she committed, our appreciation of its horrific nature, or sympathy for her three deceased children. Further, calling people psychopaths does not make them align with his point of view.
Grapic: X Post
Jeremy Boreing, the former CEO of the Daily Wire, wrote a sarcastic post on X mocking concern for mothers with postpartum psychosis and derogating the argument that our mental health system has failed new mothers. To dismiss those concerns in such a callous fashion is to display much ignorance. There is a strong case to be made that our mental health system has failed new mothers and that this mental health system is what is really on trial. Based on my experiences with our mental healthcare system, albeit never having had a child, I can venture to say that a significant proportion of mental health professionals provide inadequate care for their patients, though there are some fabulous ones as well.
We need to demonstrate an accurate understanding of the topic at hand, mental illness, which many prominent right-wing commentators and influencers seem to be lacking. Instead, they have allowed their visceral reactions to the horrific nature of these murders to overtake their usual rigor of respecting the philosophy of “innocent until proven guilty” and making sure to be factually correct. The rest of the public has no reason to take them seriously when they are so inaccurate, and they will consequently not achieve their purported goal of influencing the public at large—unless their true goal was only ever to get clicks from their readership. Instead, they do nothing but kick up prejudice against the mentally ill.
The families of people suffering from mental illness will be less understanding of their plight. All people who suffer from psychotic disorders and people harmed by them both physically and emotionally will also suffer, since increased prejudice towards people with mental illness only blunts public and private funding for research that will lead to better treatment and diagnostic options that will prevent future tragedies.