Lindsay Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial several weeks ago after a jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether she was criminally responsible for the deaths of her three children. Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey sensed her citizens’ worry that the precedent of this case would lead to copycat cases, so she has proposed the following solution:

Everybody in the state, when you have a baby, you’re going to have a home visit within days, weeks, and that will be an opportunity for a health care provider to make an assessment and to see, you know, if you need some additional support and resources.

This is a ridiculous solution. Beyond the potential for nanny state overreach, it won’t even present an actual solution to the problem of postpartum depression. These visits are going to be performed by the same health professionals who offered Clancy a cocktail of mind-altering drugs and no meaningful psychiatric help in the first place. Women already fill out postpartum depression and anxiety assessments at every postnatal appointment as standard practice after birth. No doubt Clancy did the same, yet these healthcare workers were still unable to prevent her actions.

Many believe Clancy had a psychotic break that turned murderous. Whether or not this was spurred by postpartum complications such as lack of sleep or lack of support (the latter is somewhat dubious), most women who have a hard time postpartum do not systematically strangle each of their children in front of one another. Speculating on what exactly “caused” Clancy’s alleged murdering spree does very limited good. But one thing is absolutely certain: More of these instances will happen because of the glorification of great evil that we have seen in many female public reactions to this case.

Pastor and podcaster Brian Sauvé recently noted that women are “creatures of social consensus before they are creatures of rational argumentation.” While such a comment may strike the modern reader as harsh, it is evidently true when considering the way this case has captured the attention of women in the country.

Consider if the dominant opinion about this case was that Clancy is a terrible representation of women and mothers, and that her case does harm to the real women who genuinely struggle with mental and physical complications postpartum. Do we really think women would be lining up outside the courthouse where Clancy stood trial and expressing public solidarity with her? No, if they knew their support for Clancy would be condemned and cause them to be shunned from polite society, they would keep it to themselves, or even cease to have such an opinion in the first place.

The real way we will keep more tragedies like this from occurring is to stop the public campaign romanticizing Clancy’s alleged actions. Hard postpartum experiences are going to continue, and while there are tangible ways to help women through that – as I have discussed elsewhere – murderous psychotic breaks are another issue entirely. Copycat cases aren’t going to occur just because a mother has postpartum depression, but they will happen if we don’t get very serious about honestly assessing the evil of what occurred to Clancy’s children and what their father now suffers daily.

Those who wish to never see another case like this must be very blunt about the facts of the case. Callousness is not necessary, but a steady grasp of the facts of the case is absolutely needed. It is likely that none of the women campaigning for Clancy have truly thought about what these children’s final moments were like, or imagined how the men in their lives would react to discovering their children were dead at the hands of their brides. These things are almost too horrific to think about, but doing so may prevent women from believing that murdering one’s children is no big deal if postpartum was hard.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News.

Image credit: Lindsay Clancy live streamed (Law&Crime/screenshot)