Here we are in 2026, and I find myself watching a version of feminism defend something that, to me, completely contradicts the equality movement women spent generations fighting for.
I want to make my position clear from the beginning. I believe women deserve equal rights, equal opportunities, equal treatment under the law, and equal access to positions of authority. I have no argument with that version of feminism. In fact, I highly support it.
What I do have a problem with is the version of feminism that seems to believe equality should stop the moment accountability enters the equation.
That brings me to Lindsay Clancy.
Clancy does not dispute that she killed her three children: Cora, age five; Dawson, age three; and Callan, only eight months old. Her defense is that severe mental illness, including alleged postpartum psychosis, left her without criminal responsibility for what she did.
There is an important legal distinction here, and I am going to make it because I don't want my argument dismissed on a technicality. Postpartum psychosis is a real and serious psychiatric illness. It can involve hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, confusion, and a genuine break from reality that can leave someone not criminally responsible.
Fine. That's why we have a system of justice to make those distinctions.
What I refuse to accept is the idea that recognizing the existence of a psychiatric illness comes with the requirement of rallying behind a person who killed three children. Having compassion for those who suffer mental illness does not require turning a person who committed horrendous acts into a saint.
That is where this case has become deeply disturbing to me.
Supporters of Lindsay Clancy have gathered outside the courthouse, many wearing pink, portraying themselves as advocates for mothers suffering from postpartum mental illness. If their message were simply that postpartum psychiatric emergencies need to be taken more seriously, I would have no argument with them. If they were demanding better screening, better treatment, better psychiatric care, and earlier intervention, I would support that. In this case, Lindsay Clancy herself has become the symbol.
"Justice for Lindsay"
What about for the children? There were three children in that house who never got to grow up. Three children who had no control over their mother's mental condition, no ability to escape what was happening, and no voice afterward. That's where these seekers of justice lose my vote.
The fact that a public campaign has formed around this tragedy, and managed to make the adult who killed them the face of compassion? I find that deplorable.
You can believe Lindsay Clancy was mentally ill without wearing her colors. You can demand better postpartum care without rallying around her name. You can believe that the law should consider psychiatric evidence without turning it into a rallying cry for "Justice".
What bothers me is that some people seem incapable of separating compassion for women, as a group, from supporting this specific woman. The moment a woman becomes the defendant, there is a faction whose instinct appears to be: defend her first and ask questions later. That is not equality. In fact, it's quite the opposite.
The entire women's-rights movement was built around the proposition that women are fully capable human beings. Women can make decisions. Women can exercise authority. Women can manage money. Women can vote. Women can run companies, command soldiers, become judges, practice medicine, raise families, hold political office, and take responsibility for their own lives.
So why are we now watching supposedly progressive people flirt with the opposite idea whenever a woman does something horrific? You can't tell me that women are every bit as capable as men and then suddenly tell me that female biology requires a completely different understanding of personal agency when dealing with horrific outcomes.
Adult agency cuts both ways.
If you demand that women be treated as fully capable adults when they succeed, then you must be prepared to treat them as fully capable adults when they fail, hurt someone, commit crimes, or make terrible decisions. While mental illness can complicate that question, we can't simply pretend it doesn't do the same for men.
But the cultural conversation surrounding this case has gone much further than simply recognizing mental illness. It's become about identification. People are not merely saying, "Postpartum psychosis exists." They're saying;
"I see myself in Lindsay."
If you don't find that troubling, you should. There are countless women who have suffered postpartum depression, postpartum psychosis, intrusive thoughts, severe anxiety, sleep deprivation, or psychiatric crisis and never once thought about killing their children. Their suffering deserves recognition too.
Treating the killing of three children as though it were the predictable endpoint of motherhood plus hormones only reinforces exactly the stereotype women once fought to destroy: that female biology can make women dangerously irrational and incapable of controlling themselves.
The jury controversy only made the situation worse. Clancy's supporters had visibly adopted pink, and during deliberations some jurors were seen wearing pink as well. I am not going to claim that clothing alone proves juror misconduct, because it doesn't. But I also will not pretend the optics were meaningless.
This jury was permitted to go home each night, rather than being sequestered. They were capable of accessing social media, news articles, and the opinions of family while they were outside of the courthouse. When supporters of a defendant have publicly adopted a particular color and jurors in that defendant's trial appear wearing the same color, outside influence is certainly going to come into question.
Ultimately, the jury deadlocked 11–1 and the judge declared a mistrial. The lone holdout happened to be a man.
I personally call him a hero, and I will not modify that opinion. That said, I was not in the jury room, and I cannot know exactly what argument he was making or whether I would agree with every part of his reasoning. But I will say this much.
I respect any juror who refuses to change a sincerely held conclusion simply because eleven other people are pressuring him to do so. That is what juries are supposed to be. Twelve individual minds examining evidence, not eleven people voting and the twelfth being expected to surrender.
Now we get to the larger problem. I remain deeply concerned about the cultural precedent this case will set. Every time activists argue that female biology should reduce a woman's accountability, they hand ammunition to the oldest sexist argument in the book.
Every time someone suggests that motherhood, hormones, emotional distress, or female-specific mental illness makes women less responsible for their actions, somebody else can reasonably ask where that principle ends.
If biology can diminish female agency when consequences are severe, why should society assume full female agency everywhere else?
That is the irony.
The people who defend Lindsay Clancy because they believe they are defending women's rights may be resurrecting the exact image of women that generations of feminists fought against: fragile, emotionally governed, biologically unreliable, and therefore not to be trusted with any form of authority. These aren't the rights you should be defending in a situation such as this.
Cora should have had rights.
Dawson should have had rights.
Callan should have had rights.
Their lives should not disappear behind an adult defendant because her story is more psychologically complicated or politically useful.
If a court eventually determines that Lindsay Clancy lacked criminal responsibility under Massachusetts law, that will be a legal judgment based on a specific legal standard. I'd have to respect that decision, but it wouldn't change one fact;
Lindsay Clancy murdered 3 children.
I will not celebrate her victory. I will not treat her as a symbol of woman's rights. I will mourn the lives lost and the fact that no one will answer for it. I will question why a woman with such a glaring medical condition was allowed to retain custody of her children.
Women deserve medical care...
Lindsay was under medical care.
Women deserve due process...
Lindsay has received due process.
Women deserve equal rights...
Here's where I have a problem.
If a father had recently been psychiatrically hospitalized, was severely sleep-deprived, had expressed suicidal thoughts, and was struggling badly enough that his family and doctors knew something was seriously wrong, would people have been equally comfortable leaving three very young children alone in his care?
I don't know the answer, and I'm not going to pretend that I do. All I'm going to say is for more than a century, women fought against people who told them that biology made them too unstable for independence, authority, and equal citizenship. I'd be very careful about bringing that argument back.
If modern feminism eventually convinces society that women cannot be expected to bear the same responsibility as men, it will not have advanced women's equality. It will have undermined the very foundation of it.
When that happens, nobody will need to force women back into the kitchen. The people claiming to defend them will have been the ones to send them there.
