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A charity volunteer in the UK was arrested and charged after she told the police she “might” be praying silently when questioned for standing on a public street near an abortion facility.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, Director of the UK March for Life, was standing near the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham, with no signs or protest material when police approached her after receiving a complaint that someone was praying in their mind.
“It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind,” Vaughan-Spruce said.
NEW: A Birmingham charity worker has been arrested and charged after silently praying near an abortion facility
Isabel, a woman of good character, who has provided assistance to vulnerable women and children, has been criminalised for her thoughts:https://t.co/5asU1bANp8
— ADF UK (@ADF_UK) December 20, 2022
“Censorship zones purport to ban harassment, which is already illegal. Nobody should ever be subject to harassment. But what I did was the furthest thing from harmful – I was exercising my freedom of thought, my freedom of religion, inside the privacy of my own mind. Nobody should be criminalized for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK,” she added.
Civil rights group ADF UK condemned the Orwellian thoughtcrime incident.
“Isabel’s experience should be deeply concerning to all those who believe that our hard-fought fundamental rights are worth protecting. It is truly astonishing that the law has granted local authorities such wide and unaccountable discretion, that now even thoughts deemed ‘wrong’ can lead to a humiliating arrest and a criminal charge,” said ADF UK’s legal counsel Jeremiah Igunnubole.
A mature democracy should be able to differentiate between criminal conduct and the peaceful exercise of constitutionally protected rights. Isabel, a woman of good character, and who has tirelessly served her community by providing charitable assistance to vulnerable women and children, has been treated no better than a violent criminal. The recent increase in buffer zone legislation and orders is a watershed moment in our country. We must ask ourselves whether we are a genuinely democratic country committed to protecting the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of speech. We are at serious risk of mindlessly sleepwalking into a society that accepts, normalises, and even promotes the “tyranny of the majority.”
Birmingham authorities had introduced a censorship “buffer zone” around abortion facilities prohibiting “engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval” regarding abortion, including through “verbal or written means, prayer or counselling.”
The buffer zone policy is now under consideration by the Parliament to be nationally enforced via a Public Order Bill, which would impose a 150-meter censorship zone around abortion clinics.
Liberal Democrat MP Lord Alan Beith deemed the censorship zone proposal “the most profound restriction on free speech I have ever seen in any UK legislation.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time police targeted thoughtcrimes in the UK.
A similar incident took place in Bournemouth last month, where a woman was harassed by police for silently praying near an abortion facility.
A Liverpool grandmother was also arrested and fined last year for praying silently near an abortion facility on a walk during lockdown, but she successfully overturned the ruling on human rights grounds.
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