‘Not raising my kids’: Men dump girlfriends who sympathize with Lindsay Clancy

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Lindsay Clancy’s defense rested Friday after arguing postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible for killing her three children.
Prosecutors immediately countered with a psychiatrist who says Clancy knew right from wrong.
Online, the case has become an unexpected relationship test, with men saying sympathy for Clancy is a dating “red flag.”

The murder trial of Lindsay Clancy is approaching its conclusion in Massachusetts, but another trial has apparently broken out across social media.

This one involves boyfriends judging girlfriends.

Clancy, the former labor-and-delivery nurse who killed her three young children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — in their Duxbury home in January 2023, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Her attorneys don’t dispute that Clancy strangled the children. The question for jurors is whether severe mental illness prevented her from being criminally responsible.

The defense rested Friday after presenting experts who contend Clancy suffered from postpartum psychosis. Defense psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified that she was “frankly psychotic” on the day of the killings and experienced command hallucinations telling her to kill the children and herself.

Prosecutors promptly produced their own psychiatrist with a dramatically different assessment.

Dr. Avram Mack testified Friday that he found no evidence Clancy was psychotic when she killed her children and concluded she retained the ability to distinguish right from wrong. Prosecutors have also emphasized evidence they say demonstrates planning, including Clancy sending her husband out of the house and tracking how long he would be gone.

The dueling testimony has fueled an enormous online debate over postpartum mental illness, criminal responsibility — and now, apparently, dating compatibility.

Twitchy highlighted a series of viral posts from men saying they had ended relationships, or would reconsider one, after discovering a girlfriend strongly defended Clancy.

One post summed up the sentiment bluntly: “Not who you want raising your kids.”

That reaction has produced its own backlash from women who argue that such comments reveal a profound misunderstanding of postpartum psychosis, a rare but serious psychiatric condition. The Clancy case has drawn hundreds of supporters, including women who say their own experiences with postpartum mental illness make them sympathetic to the defense’s argument even while acknowledging the horror of what happened.

And there is an important distinction getting flattened in the social-media food fight. Understanding postpartum psychosis is not the same thing as excusing murder.

That’s essentially the question the actual jury must resolve: not whether postpartum psychosis exists — medical experts agree that it does — but whether Clancy was suffering from a qualifying mental disease or defect that left her unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of her actions when she killed her children.

The evidence has been wrenching.

Clancy’s family testified that her mental health deteriorated dramatically before the killings, including suicidal thoughts and fears that she might hurt her children. The prosecution, meanwhile, has presented medical professionals who treated her shortly beforehand and testified they saw depression and anxiety but not psychosis.

One particularly chilling detail emerged Friday.

Resnick testified that Clancy told him she said “go to God” while strangling her 3-year-old son Dawson. Prosecutor Erin Moriarty’s rebuttal psychiatrist argued that statement was evidence Clancy understood she was killing her child and understood death itself — supporting his conclusion that she knew her actions were wrong.

Closing arguments are expected next week. The jury will decide Clancy’s criminal responsibility. Apparently America’s boyfriends are conducting their own deliberations at home.

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