When MPs backed the enforcement of ‘buffer zones’ around abortion clinics, there were warnings that the measure might backfire. Two months on from that vote, those consequences are now clear for all to see.
The director of an anti-abortion group is facing prosecution after praying in front of an abortion clinic in Birmingham. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce of UK March for Life is accused of breaching a public space protection order – but she insists she was only exercising her freedom of religion ‘inside the privacy of my own mind’.
Vaughan-Spruce is not accused of harassing anyone. The 45-year-old simply said a prayer inside an exclusion zone. It’s come to something, hasn’t it, when you can be prosecuted after praying, silently or otherwise, under English law? But, of course, the warnings this might happen were there from the outset.
Many pro-lifers, including the admirable Dominic Lawson, are atheist.
The threat to free speech and free thought posed by the bill has been realised.
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