09/05/2026
THE CULTURE OF DEATH IS ALIVE AND WELL
Lindsay Clancy strangled her three children. That was never in dispute at trial. The only question before the jury was whether she would be held responsible for it. Her defense argued that postpartum psychosis and overmedication left her unable to know right from wrong. On September 4, after seven days of deliberation, the jury deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial. According to her own attorney, the count stood eleven to one in favor of finding her not criminally responsible.
Mental illness is real. Postpartum psychosis is real.
But three children are still dead. Cora was five. Dawson was three. Callan was eight months old. Their names deserve better than a footnote in a national conversation more interested in understanding and explaining the killer than in mourning the killed.
We have become experts at accounting for evil while forgetting its victims. We diagnose. We rationalize. We redefine. Responsibility disappears beneath layer after layer of clinical vocabulary, until the offender stands at the center of the story and the innocent victims are pushed to the margins.
A nation’s instincts tell on it. And ours are trained.
For decades America has been taught to regard children as burdens, pregnancy as a problem, and human life as disposable the moment it becomes inconvenient.
Margaret Sanger said it plainly in a 1957 interview with Mike Wallace: the greatest sin, she believed, was bringing into the world children who were diseased, or destined to be delinquents and prisoners — children marked from birth. That was not compassion. That was eugenics in a soft voice — the presumption that some of us are qualified to decide which lives deserve to exist.
The abortion culture wholely adopted that assumption: human value depends on whether a life is wanted, healthy, convenient, or useful.
Once life becomes negotiable in the womb, reverence for life outside the womb is up for grabs.
Recently I asked artificial intelligence to build a simple slide declaring that babies are miracles, not mistakes. Two generators refused. The message, I was told, violated their policies.
Think about that.
Calling a baby a miracle is flagged as dangerous. Radical ideology is treated as enlightenment. Defending innocent life is labeled controversial, while socialism, sexual confusion, perversion, and open hostility toward biblical morality are ushered into the mainstream without a murmur.
Technology is not neutral when the men programming it are not neutral. Artificial intelligence does not invent values. It reflects the values of whoever holds the switch.
And no, America is not enjoying some golden age of moral recovery!
The mayor of the most influential city in America openly identifies as a democratic socialist— Communist. The Democratic Party has grown spacious enough to house Marxist economics under their big tent while growing steadily more hostile to the sanctity of human life.
Abortion is still celebrated as freedom.
Gender confusion is still marketed to children.
Socialism is still repackaged as compassion.
Biblical conviction is still branded extremism.
And the strangling of three children can generate more public sympathy for the woman who did it than grief for the children who died. Only a fool or a coward would call that healthy.
We do not need softer language. We need moral clarity. For one I would like to hear more pulpits side up with the Biblical moral code instead of grinning like a bunch of hyenas Sunday after Sunday.
Every child is made in the image of God. Every life carries a worth that no government, court, culture, corporation, or political movement has the authority to revoke.
Children are not inconveniences.
Babies are not mistakes.
Human life is not disposable.
“Children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward” (Psalm 127:3).
But outrage alone will save no children. Outrage is loud and not costly. What this hour demands is Christian homes that welcome children as rewards, fathers who guard the weak, mothers who are surrounded and supported rather than left alone in the dark, and churches with spine enough to say what God has already said. Perhaps addressing “gender affirming care” would be a good place to start by pointing out the procedures that have been practiced in small towns like ours.
The same God who numbers our days knows the name of every child America has thrown away, and He has not forgotten one of them. This includes Cora, Dawson, and Callan.
A civilization that will not protect its children is not progressing.
It is perishing.
Harold Vaughan
