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Join Freddie Sayers for an exclusive deep dive with pro-life activists Adam Smith-Connor, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, and Livia Tossici-Bolt, who share their experiences of being questioned and arrested for praying and holding signs near US abortion clinics.
With the US State Department and the Trump administration closely monitoring Adam and Livia’s cases as critical tests of free speech, and Vice President JD Vance calling out Adam’s conviction in his 2025 Munich speech, these stories have ignited a transatlantic row over censorship and religious freedom.
Are these activists victims of a free speech crackdown, or is the US justified in its actions?
I thought Freddie asked good questions, he’s trying his best to steelman the arguments for the buffer zones but it’s mad.
It’s clearly unacceptable to yell and scream at women using the clinic but I can’t understand how anything else is forbidden. I don’t see why protesters cannot stand with placards, even unpleasant ones. Not ideal but I would imagine that protesters outside vivisection labs have pretty salty signs which surely intimidate the workers (who may well believe their work is good for humanity).
Furthermore, I do not see why the protesters cannot offer help to women; there are surely some who might welcome it and, apart from a feeling of guilt perhaps, I don’t understand why it would seriously bother them. I know I haven’t been in the situation but, still, if you make a particular decision and someone offers an alternative, surely it’s easy to turn it down.
But this isn’t even the point. They are arresting people for silently praying. What if they lied? What if the protesters said that they were just hanging round? Not praying at all officer.
This makes no sense to me.
Will there come a time when protests a mile away will be stopped? Or someone in a High Street protesting against abortion because there might well be a woman on the way to a clinic or has suddenly found she’s pregnant?
When MPs voted for this law is this sort of thing what they thought would happen? Is this a stupid law or is it just being stupidly applied? It is not a free speech issue it is banning people from being caring human beings.
Freddie tried hard to conceal his feelings on the question, but I must say he looked rather satanic at times.
Seems disingenuous to me. The reason these people stand there is because they want to be seen by the women going in. That’s the issue, not whether they are praying or not. It’s not a thought crime, it’s standing there that is the crime.
Some people strongly believe that abortion is wrong. They should be able to think that, but they should not force that view on others. They have the freedom to speak as long as they respect other people’s right not to have to listen.
The idea that the US State Department weighed in on this surprises and disappoints me.
And what is the ‘force’ being applied in these cases?
We are really in Topsy Turvy land when a few fervent Christians praying as individuals outside an abortion clinic – that is, not executing a communal liturgical “service” – are considered enemies of the state, but a mass liturgical service as practiced in mosques, and executed by hundreds of Muslim men in the city streets, obstructing traffic purposefully, and meant as a form of political intimidation and warning, is tolerated as freedom of religion.
Here are three people either doing nothing at all or engaged in totally harmless behavior in a public space. In every case, the legal target is a person engaged in behavior that 98% of the population would regard as completely innocuous.
Of the abortion-seekers entering a clinic a fraction would regard the behavior as offensive, but the facts show that another fraction would accept intervention as helpful.
Would the man who was silently praying have been arrested had he been praying outside a betting shop, say, rather than an abortion clinic?
The law is designed specifically to protect abortion providers against anyone who might seem to be opposed to the practice.
The issue is not so much “free speech” as “equal protection.” Abortion providers have become another “protected class” in Britain.
Mr Sayers, there are some facts that you are unaware of. 1) NO intimidation has taken place outside the Bournemouth Abortion Clinic (the reason cited by the Pro Abortion LibDem Councillors who brought in the Buffer Zone). 2) NO correct responses to a survey that was undertaken to get local residents views was published. 3) The local Police were NOT involved, it was the Council’s Community Officers. These ARE facts, I pray within 50 yards of the Clinic on a regular basis. Brian
As an atheist, I consider all prayers to simply be thoughts, so this does absolutely strike me as a thought crime. “You may think what you want, but we better not catch you thinking something we don’t agree with in public.”
I can’t be bothered to watch the video (why no transcript?) but this is interesting issue, and one where I disagree with some of my friends. Personally I think a ‘buffer zone’ is appropriate, and yes I think that standing in it – whether you’re ‘silently praying’ or not – is quite possibly harassment. If you want to pray, pray outside the buffer zone. Mind you, I don’t believe in God and I do believe in legal abortion, so perhaps I’m predisposed to this opinion. I suspect religious and anti-abortion folk are predisposed to think the other way. No point in trying for any dispassionate debate on this one, then 🙂