Birmingham Charity Worker Arrested for Silent Prayer
"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."
A charity volunteer has been arrested and charged on four different counts after she told police she ‘might’ be praying silently.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was standing near the British Pregnancy and Advisory Service (BPAS) Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham.
The police received a complaint from a passer by who suspected she was praying silently in her mind.
Birmingham authorities introduced censorship zones around abortion facilities which criminalise individuals perceived to be ‘engaging in any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval’ in relation to abortion.
This could include through ‘verbal or written means, prayer or counselling’.
ADF UK said that the 150m censorship zone is bigger than a football pitch (115 meters).
Commenting on her arrest, Vaughan-Spruce said:
It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind. 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 criminalised for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK.
Legal counsel for ADF UK Jeremiah Igunnubole said:
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.
Part of a disturbing pattern
Vaughan-Spruce is the Director for UK March for Life and has frequently prayed outside abortion clinics and facilities over the past 20 years.
Her arrest follows similar stories in Bournemouth, where a woman was told to leave an area by local authorities for praying, even though she wasn’t inside the local censorship zone, and Liverpool, where a grandmother was arrested and fined for silently praying near an abortion facility on a dog walk during lockdown.
Parliamentarians at Westminster are considering national legislation to introduce buffer zones via the Public Order Bill.
In 2018, a national review into the work of pro-life volunteers outside abortion clinics concluded that instances of harassment are rare.
CARE has always argued that while genuine harassment is wrong, existing laws are enough to deal with these rare instances. The trouble with introducing buffer zones, or censorship zones is they infringe on both freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.
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