Staff Reports
Abby Johnson is not whispering. The CEO & Founder of And Then There Were None and leader of ProLove Ministries — and a former Planned Parenthood clinic director — has gone on national broadcasts this week to tell Americans what should be obvious: the victims in the Lindsay Clancy case are the three children. That blunt line is exactly the kind of wake‑up call the media needs, because too many online takes rush to make the mother the center of the story and forget the little lives lost.
What Abby Johnson said — plain and sharp
On conservative programs this week, Johnson argued that sympathy for Lindsay Clancy too often buries the fact that three children died. She told hosts that “the first thing that … mothers should be thinking about is how terrible for these victims, for these children that she killed.” Johnson also made the reasonable point that “two things can be true at the same time: we need better postpartum care, and it is unacceptable for a woman to murder her children.” That is not an either/or. It’s common sense.
Why the timing matters in the Lindsay Clancy case
The Clancy case is in the final phase of a criminal trial in Plymouth Superior Court. Prosecutors say the defendant is charged with homicide counts related to the deaths of her three young children. The defense says she was suffering from severe postpartum psychosis and lacked criminal responsibility. Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sprague and Chief of the Family Protection Unit Shanan Buckingham have led the prosecution, while defense counsel Kevin Reddington has advanced the mental‑health defense. Judge William Sullivan is overseeing the proceedings and the jury will decide what the law requires. Public commentary matters now because public pressure can shape how the story is told — and sometimes that pressure forgets the victims.
The cultural problem: sympathy without accountability
We should care about postpartum mental health. We should demand better support for new moms, stronger community safety nets, and real access to psychiatric care. But caring is not the same as excusing. Too many influencers and journalists reflexively cast any troubled parent as the victim and the community as the villain. That’s a dangerous shortcut. It lets us pat ourselves on the back for empathy while saying nothing to the children who will never grow up. If you want to help, push for better postpartum care and for laws that protect children — not for headlines that turn a criminal trial into a sympathy contest.
Abby Johnson’s message is simple and sharp: name the victims, and don’t let high‑emotion storytelling erase them. The country can do two things at once — improve care for mothers and insist on real accountability when children are killed. The trial will end in a verdict from a jury, but the fight after the courtroom should be about prevention, not performance. Remember the children first, and demand policies that actually protect families rather than social media applause.
