Since The View was on hiatus this summer, the cohosts were playing catch-up with the latest headlines on Monday’s (September 8) Season 30 premiere.
One of the most sensational topics of discussion across the nation has, of course, been the trial of Lindsay Clancy for the murders of her three children, and her defense of postpartum psychosis. After the case ended in a mistrial, and her lawyer went on TV to ask Donald Trump for a pardon for Clancy, the cohosts weighed in on the latest developments in the case.
After introducing the story, Whoopi Goldberg turned the mic over to Sara Haines first, since she had a unique perspective on the matter.
“I went through postpartum depression, which is something that affects 15% of moms. Psychosis is very rare; it’s 0.3%. But I think that the greatest tragedy here is Cora, Dawson, and Callan’s lives being lost, that they’re no longer here. But I also want to say the medical system absolutely failed Lindsey Clancy,” Haines said. “This was a woman who did everything you tell her. She raised her hand. She had multiple medications, hospitalizations, doctors. And I’m not blaming one provider, but I’m just saying that she alerted people, and something could have been caught before the unimaginable happens. And so, when I think about how this all happened, the best thing is that hopefully it was a wake-up call to maternal health and the urgency it needs to be treated with.”
Joy Behar challenged her on the statement, asking, “But if she had all of that care, why do you say it’s failed her?”
“Because her kids are dead now,” Haines said.
“I know. What I’m saying is, what else could they have done?” Behar asked.
“So, what I’m saying is that to have 13 psychiatric medications within the span of a few months, something’s been lost. There was a lack of communication between a lot of these medical people. She raised her hand for help, and when it comes to justice, I think Lindsay Clancy, I can’t think of anything that can be done to her that isn’t as bad as waking up, being Lindsey Clancy now. She killed her kids…. But I think the justice comes in really taking a look at how we handle the next mother that says, ‘Something’s wrong with me, and I need help,’” Haines said.
Sunny Hostin agreed with Haines, saying, “They should have listened to her. And I agree with you. Four months, 13 different psychiatric medications. I mean, I was speaking to a psychiatrist who said it takes a long time for those drugs to work… and to have that sort of recipe going on with drugs, and they can interact with each other.” Hostin continued, “She was saying, ‘I’m hearing things.’ She had suicidal ideations, homicidal ideations, and no one was listening to her. When I heard the verdict, honestly, I was not surprised.”
Hostin then explained the rationale for a defense of mental incapacity in a criminal case such as Clancy’s and argued that it applies to her. “It just means that the person who is suffering from this mental incapacity cannot distinguish between right and wrong, does not understand the wrongness of what they’re doing, or can’t conform their emotions and their actions to the law that is present. For me, it fits squarely within it.”
The cohost, who is also a former prosecutor, then offered a take on why the case resulted in a mistrial after one juror refused to accept that as a defense, saying, “When I heard 11 jurors wanted to acquit her versus the one, the one that probably didn’t want to acquit her felt that someone needed to be responsible for the deaths of three children, and that’s a moral thing. And I get that emotional piece, but the law worked.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin, who recently had her first child in February, then jumped in to say that she was cognizant of her own mental health after the birth to monitor for potential postpartum depression. “I was looking for any sign because so many of my friends did have postpartum depression. I was lucky that other than a couple days of baby blues, I was fine. But I was in direct coordination, talking to my husband, who’s asking, ‘How are you feeling?’ I’m not putting any blame on her husband here, but she did say, ‘I have had thoughts of harming the child.’ She never should have been alone in a home with those kids. Those doctors, the medical system failed her.”
However, she did not think Clancy deserved exoneration on account of her mental incapacity, arguing, “While psychosis explains it, it should be factored into sentencing, she still did kill her kids.”
Griffin also pointed to the aftermath in which another woman, who was reportedly following the Clancy case, killed her child as well. “These are things that people can use to then get out.”
Whoopi Goldberg then stated that one of the bigger problems indicated by the case is that “people generally don’t believe women when they come in and say something’s wrong.”
Hostin agreed with Goldberg’s point, noting, “There are studies that show that when women go to the hospital and say, ‘I feel pain,’ or ‘I don’t feel well,’ they are dismissed just more than men are.”
Goldberg said she experienced this herself, saying, “I know this because, for years, I had horrific menstrual cramps, horrific, where I was under the table, and people blew it off.”
Finally, Ana Navarro took her turn to speak on the matter, saying, “What I really got upset about is the fact that there’s people taking sides that somehow this has become political. Not everything in America seems to be political these days.” She then pointed to cases of mothers killing their children in the past and said, “People need to understand that mental health is something that can affect you regardless of your partisanship, regardless of your creed, regardless of your race, regardless of your ethnicity, and we need to treat it seriously and with respect.”
Goldberg then closed out the segment by saying, “Doctors are not taught about women’s stuff. I mean, listen, women just found out about their own bodies in the last 40 years because no one talks about it. We do.”
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