Nancy Mace: Men Are Not The Ones Setting Women Back

Patrick Clancy lived through every parent’s worst nightmare: He buried all of his children.

Last week, he sat down for an interview few people could ever imagine giving. He spoke about forgiveness. He spoke about grief. He spoke about finding a way to keep living after unimaginable loss.

Then one of those ladies from “The View,” co-host Sara Haines, turned his tragedy into a referendum on his marriage.

On national television, she questioned why Patrick did not stay with the woman who murdered his three children.

Yes, really.

A father lost all three of his children at the hands of their own mother. Instead of asking how he survived, Sara Haines asked why he moved on.

Think about this for a moment.

Would anyone ask a mother why she did not stay married to the man who murdered her children?

Of course not.

No one would expect a woman to stay married to the man who murdered her children. No one would question her decision to rebuild her life. No one would attack her for moving forward.

So why hold a father to a different standard?

Patrick Clancy owes no one an explanation. He owes no one a lifetime chained to the woman who destroyed his family.

Forgiving someone is not the same as staying with them. Healing doesn’t require staying trapped in the worst day of your life.

Mental illness is real. So is grief. So is the right to heal. So is the right to start a new family with a woman who won’t murder his children.

Patrick has said he believes mental illness drove Lindsay’s actions. She never asked him to forgive her. He did it anyway. Few people could.

His choice. His life. Not “The View”’s.

Yet somehow, the sympathy in this story keeps landing on the mother who killed her children instead of the father who lost them. He came home to the unthinkable. He buried his children. He found the strength to forgive. And for all of it, for being as Christian as he could, he gets demoralized on national television. Something is deeply wrong with our culture and our values if the attack on Patrick is resonating.

Here is what too many people refuse to say out loud, but we will.

Women spent generations demanding to be taken seriously. To be treated as capable, rational adults. To be judged by our actions, not excused from them. Those battles were not won so a daytime talk show could revive the tired idea of men as emotional punching bags, expected to absorb every blow in silence while women are spared accountability.

Real equality means one standard.

Equal respect. Equal responsibility. Equal accountability. A woman’s actions are not a burden her husband should be expected to carry for the rest of his life in the name of his wedding vows.

“In sickness and in health” was never a promise to stay beside the person who murdered your children. No vow asks for it, and no normal person expects it.

And make no mistake, the message matters. When a national platform suggests a grieving father should have stayed in hell, it tells every man carrying unbearable pain his grief doesn’t matter. It tells women their actions carry no consequences. Neither message moves women forward.

Men aren’t the ones setting women back; double standards and excuses are. Women like Sara Haines are. The pink mob is.

Patrick Clancy deserves peace. He deserves to heal. He deserves to rebuild his life without being judged by a talk show panel whose members have never walked a single step in his shoes. He has carried more than any father should ever have to carry.

So here is some advice for “The View”: sit this one out.

And remember who this is really about. Cora, Dawson, and Callan deserve to be remembered for who they were, not turned into a talking point about their father’s marriage.

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Congresswoman Nancy Mace is the U.S. Representative for South Carolina’s 1st congressional district. Subscribe to her YouTube channel here.

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