A Massachusetts jury let Lindsay Clancy walk after she strangled her three children.
Now the state's Democrat governor is sending government nurses into the home of every parent who has a newborn.
What she announced on live radio will tell you exactly where the Left wants to take this country.
Maura Healey's Home Visit Plan and the Parental Rights Question She Refused to Answer
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey – a Democrat who sued the Trump administration dozens of times as the state's attorney general before winning the governorship in 2022 – announced that she wants $2 million in taxpayer funding to expand the state's Welcome Family program into every home with a newborn in Massachusetts.
She did not describe it as an option.
On Boston Public Radio, Healey said: "Everybody in the state, when you have a baby, you're going to have a home visit. You're going to have a home visit within days, weeks, and that will be an opportunity for a healthcare provider to make an assessment and to see if you need some additional support and resources."
Everybody. Not families in crisis. Not mothers who ask for help. Everybody.
Massachusetts Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Carnevale made the overreach case: "Doctors, today, they ask about postpartum depression. They ask about the need for resources. So, there are plenty of resources available to women after they have children in Massachusetts and nationwide. And this example by Gov. Healey to send people into the homes of new moms is an example of government overreach."
Welcome Family Program Would Send Government Nurses to All 68000 Massachusetts Newborns
The administration calls the program "voluntary." Healey's own words on radio called it something else entirely.
The nurse who arrives is authorized to screen for domestic violence and substance use, ask about the home environment, and connect families to state and community agencies – all on a single visit that ends with a follow-up call two to three weeks later to confirm the family acted on the referrals.
That is not a wellness check. That is intake processing.
Welcome Family currently serves roughly 3,000 births per year. Massachusetts records approximately 68,000 births annually. Healey's $2 million expansion would push the program into every one of those homes – and the state's own literature makes clear the nurse is specifically there to assess whether the home is safe.
Healey's office has not answered the question every new parent in Massachusetts should be asking: what happens when a family says no.
The program is described as voluntary – but "voluntary" means something different when the government already has your address from a birth record, already knows a baby was just born, and is sending an official to your door within days to conduct an assessment of your home and your fitness as a parent.
A family that declines faces the same state apparatus that holds legal authority to remove children. Whether a refusal gets noted, flagged, or followed up is a detail Healey has chosen not to clarify.
Lindsay Clancy Mistrial Gave Healey the Cover to Expand Government Overreach Into Every Home
Healey announced the programafter a Massachusetts judge declared a mistrial in the Lindsay Clancy murder case.
Clancy killed her three children in Duxbury in 2023. Her defense argued postpartum psychosis left her unable to distinguish right from wrong. One juror blocked conviction. The trial ended without a verdict.
Healey used the window a high-profile tragedy opened – and turned it into the broadest expansion of government home-visiting authority in Massachusetts history.
The playbook is always the same: find a sympathetic crisis, attach the program to it, declare it voluntary, and build the infrastructure. The infrastructure is what matters.
Massachusetts would be the first state in the country to offer this kind of universal newborn home-visit program – which means it would also be the first state to normalize government officials conducting parental fitness assessments on families who have done nothing wrong, broken no law, and asked for no help.
Every governor in every blue state is watching to see if Massachusetts gets away with it.
Sources:
- Danielle Wallace, "Maura Healey's home visit plan for new parents sparks overreach debate," Fox News, September 21, 2026.
- Brianna Lyman, "Massachusetts Responds To Lindsay Clancy Failure By Expanding Home Surveillance Of New Moms," Daily Caller, September 21, 2026.
- Associated Press, "Massachusetts governor proposes improved postpartum healthcare after Lindsay Clancy trial," September 16, 2026.
