By: Rachel Morales, Executive Director, Right to Life Kern County
You would have to be living under a rock these days not to have seen the Lindsay Clancy mania that seems to be plaguing social media. From the relatively small number of people condemning her actions and calling for swift justice to the vast majority of women posting that they empathize with Lindsay and saying things like, “That could have been any of us!”
Before I say another word, I want to be very clear: motherhood is challenging. Postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis are real conditions that real women have experienced, and I cannot even imagine how scary and difficult that must have been. At the same time, there seems to be such a high level of empathy among the women participating in the “Same Lindsay” trend that they are forgetting who the victims of this crime are: the three dead children, not the mother who admitted to killing them.
So where is this seemingly toxic level of empathy coming from?
Well, I have a theory: abortion.
Now, before you come at me with, “Well, Rachel, you think everything is related to abortion!” hear me out.
According to a 2024 analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, approximately one in four U.S. women are expected to have at least one abortion by age 45 if abortion rates from 2020 remained constant. That means there are millions of women who have experienced abortion. During pregnancy, a woman’s body undergoes tremendous changes. Hormone levels change dramatically, and the brain also undergoes measurable chemical, structural, and functional changes. Research has found measurable changes in the brain during pregnancy, some of which can persist after pregnancy ends. Newer research also suggests that reproductive experience can have lasting effects on brain structure and connectivity.
When a woman ends her pregnancy prematurely, her body does not suddenly “Alt+Undo” all of those changes. Some pregnancy-related changes may take time to reverse, and some may persist for a period of time or potentially longer. We still do not fully understand what happens to every pregnancy-related neurological adaptation when a pregnancy ends in abortion.
That uncertainty leads me to a hypothesis.
The maternal instinct or the desire to love, nurture, and protect another, is one of the adaptations that can develop during pregnancy. If a pregnancy ends through abortion, perhaps some of the neurological and hormonal changes associated with pregnancy continue after the pregnancy itself has ended. Could a woman’s brain and body still feel a pull to protect and nurture something she no longer has?
If so, perhaps some women find a cause or a person they believe is being mistreated and begin pouring that nurturing instinct into that cause or person.
Perhaps these women are, in a sense, mothering Lindsay.
And their empathy for her has reached such a dangerously toxic level that they are losing sight of the true victims: the three dead children.
There is another possibility worth considering. Perhaps when a pregnancy ends prematurely, the brain does not have an opportunity to complete all of the adaptations that would normally occur throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Perhaps some of those processes are interrupted. Could that leave certain women experiencing a sense of something unfinished or missing, causing them to seek other outlets for the emotions and instincts that pregnancy had begun to awaken?
These are hypotheses, not established scientific conclusions. But shouldn’t we be willing to ask the questions?
Pro-life supporters have been sounding the alarm for years that abortion does not just affect the unborn; it affects all of us. Not only because someone’s daughter or son, best friend, or future spouse is being killed prematurely, but also because we still have much to learn about the psychological and neurological effects abortion has on the women who experience it.
Women deserve better.
Women deserve support, encouragement, honest research, and real answers about the ways abortion affects them: physically, psychologically, and emotionally. If there are unanswered questions about what happens to a woman’s brain and body when a pregnancy ends, we should not be afraid to ask them. We owe women the truth.