What the Lindsay Clancy case tells us about our abortion culture

The killings sparked an outpouring of support for Clancy. Not the bereaved father—the mother who killed them. Patrick Clancy, whose voice can be heard on the unbearable 911 call in which he discovers the bodies of his babies in the basement, has been villainized as cold-blooded, distant, not understanding enough of his wife’s mental struggles.

The arguments put forth in Lindsay’s defense are, in many cases, the same arguments abortion activists have put forward for decades. 

This is horrifying, but it should not be surprising. The Clancy case reminded me of an infanticide in Alberta in 2005, when a 19-year-old strangled her newborn baby boy with her underwear and tossed the corpse into the neighbor’s front yard. In 2011, her murder conviction was “downgraded” to infanticide, and she was given a suspended sentence in lieu of jail time. 

The judge explicitly cited abortion culture one of the determining factors, stating that “while many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept, and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support.”

Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada posted a CBC article on the case to their Facebook page with the comment: “A tragic situation, but yes, there are compelling reasons for infanticide being a lesser crime than murder.” In response to my query “Such as?” ARCC removed the comment and blocked my asking further questions underneath the article.

Few Canadians are fully aware of the legal regime that governs killing children in this country. Section 233 of the Criminal Code states that: “A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not (a) it has breathed; (b) it has an independent circulation; or (c) the navel string is severed.” 

In short, the Criminal Code explicitly refers to these children as children, but denies them legal humanity. It is open season until children have “completely proceeded” from the womb. And if an infant is killed—it still may be considered “a lesser crime than murder,” as Joyce Arthur revealingly put it. 

The CBC, predictably, has cast a compassionate eye on Lindsay Clancy, publishing an article titled “How different would Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial look if it had happened in Canada?” The short answer: Very. Canada’s infanticide law dictates that if a mother kills an infant under the age of one while her mind is “disturbed,” because of “the effect of lactation,” or because she has not “fully recovered from the effects of giving birth,” the crime is not murder or manslaughter. Infanticide, a “lesser crime,” carries a maximum of five years in prison.

But it gets worse. The CBC managed to find an “expert” to suggest that even this regime is too restrictive.

“What’s alarming about the CBC article is not that it quotes an expert who outlines how the Clancy case would have been treated differently in Canada, but that the expert names what she regards as the real problem: Clancy’s two older children were past their first birthday, so the lesser charge of infanticide would not apply,” pro-life activist Pete Baklinski wrote in the National Post. 

‘That is a shortcoming in the Canadian law,’ said University of British Columbia law professor Isabel Grant. Read that again. Three children are dead. And what does our state broadcaster do? It platforms the idea that the problem from a Canadian perspective is not the killings: it’s that Canadian law would not reduce the charge for a mother killing her two older children. The implication is staggering.

“The CBC article did not say ‘killing a three-year-old and a five-year-old should carry a lesser charge,’” Baklinski added. “It did not have to. It treated leniency towards mothers who kill their older children as the civilized position — and the age limit as the thing that needs fixing.” As pro-life activists have been warning for a half-century, once you begin to deny human beings their right to life based on arbitrary standards, it is difficult to foresee how far the killing will go.

If not babies in the womb, why not babies just outside the womb? If infanticide is a “lesser crime than murder” because of the mother’s mental state, why should the mother of a preschooler or a kindergartener be charged with murder? Pro-life activists have long argued that if it is wrong to kill a toddler because the mother is enduring difficult circumstances, it is equally wrong to kill a preborn child. 

With the Lindsay Clancy trial, we are seeing those who offer justification for the killing of children respond with chilling moral consistency. “What about them?” pro-lifers ask, pointing to the newborn, the toddler, the five-year-old. “Them?” reply the experts. “Oh, yes. Them too.”