Sofia Carbone

“Dawson, my buddy.” Those are the words Patrick Clancy screamed on the 911 call when he found his three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months — strangled in the basement. I haven’t followed every day of this trial. But I’ve watched too many of my peers — young fathers — get wrecked just talking about it. I have never felt worse for another father. Every dad’s nightmare is still somehow worse than you can picture until you hear those words. That there is now a movement of women defending the woman who did this — pink shirts, “Team Lindsay,” rallies outside the courthouse — is an indictment of our culture. A movement that made abortion its highest political good should not shock us when it cannot treat three murdered children as the highest evil. Postpartum suffering is not new. We have known that pain for generations. What is new is a mother killing all three of her children and a movement rushing to excuse it — then turning on the husband who took paternity leave, got her counseling, worked from home, and was running her errands when she did it. What is not new is a father who would have traded places with his kids without hesitation. That picture of Patrick Clancy on the stand is a man already dead inside. He would have died for those children gladly. If this is who we sympathize with, we will see more of it. Absolute ghouls.