On Sunday, Fox News reported, “Calls to repeal women’s rights to vote are emerging from the online firestorm over the Lindsay Clancy trial, prompting Republican women to warn that the intraparty rhetoric could hurt the GOP.”
The fact that this article was published by Fox News was itself noteworthy. Press Baron Rupert Murdoch is one of the few remaining centers of power on the right who is strong enough to pick fights with Trump and his MAGA supporters. In recent years, Murdoch’s outlets have carved out a position for themselves as gatekeepers who work to protect the GOP brand from the most self-destructive impulses of MAGA. One recent example of this phenomenon is the decision to fire (or at least take off the air) the firebrand election denier Maria Bartiromo.
The Fox article was also significant for highlighting how the tragic case of Lindsay Clancy is being exploited by the hard right to justify misogyny. Clancy killed three of her children in 2023. Her legal defense was that she suffered from postpartum psychosis and bipolar disorder. Eleven jurors voted to acquit Clancy based on this argument, but one juror resisted, leading to a mistrial.
Nine of the jurors who voted to acquit—presumably because they thought Clancy deserved pity rather than harsh punishment—were women; the lone holdout was a man. The hard right has seized on these facts to justify arguments that women are incapable of reason. The Fox article quoted a post on X that made a common argument: “The female jurors in the Lindsay Clancy trial are speaking out about their deliberations and disagreements with the sole male holdout. The more they speak the better they make the case for repealing the 19th Amendment.”
It is absolutely not lol I watched until the prosecution rested, it’s because the Massachusetts law is that the prosecution has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that she was sane at and during the incident, for a person who had been to a psychiatric hospital multiple times and was on trazadone, an ssri, and was hardly sleeping and wrote in her diary she was having hallucinations. Even if you think she was sane at the time that alone is enough for reasonable doubt.
She got mental health care and I would argue with one doctor pretty good care, but US mental health care just sucks. I would also say it’s still her fault for not leaving when she started going downhill (and told her mom she had thoughts of hurting the kids), and because I think it was more of a murder-suicide than psychosis. It’s your responsibility to leave at that point if you feel like you might be a danger to people around you.
How does this not prevent the prosecution of all crimes? How could you ever prove that about anyone, ever?
Well it’s beyond a reasonable doubt, and most don’t plead insanity because most people won’t believe “oh he went insane so he robbed a bank” unless they have a reason to. This lady was going downhill for months.