UK woman Livia Tossici-Bolt was just an ordinary woman with pro-life views. That was until she was thrust into the spotlight for being convicted for standing outside an abortion centre with a sign that simply offered women attending the chance to “talk – if you want.”
Her conviction came in the same week that The Times reported that “the police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms” – a simply mind-boggling statistic.
Tossici-Bolt, a mother of grown up children who lives in Bournemouth, became somewhat of a household name last week when she was convicted of breaching a localised abortion clinic buffer zone. The creation of the large public zones are a relatively new phenomenon, having been first introduced in the UK, Northern Ireland, and here in the Republic. The British zones make it illegal to carry out any act “with the intent of, or reckless as to whether it has the effect of, influencing” any person in the zone – which is within 100 metres of an abortion facility.
Regardless of your views on abortion, the creation of these public zones, where on threat of escalating fines of up to €2,500, no-one is allowed to talk about abortion, hand out leaflets for pregnancy centres or even silently pray, is part of a disturbing drift towards the draconian stamping down on free speech. British and Irish Governments have shown that they are willing and ready to stifle freedom of speech on this issue by creating these spaces.
Tossici-Bolt’s conviction comes less than two months after US Vice President, JD Vance. blasted European leaders for backsliding on freedom of speech and democracy. Speaking at the conference on external security, Vance said the threat he worries about most vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, or China.
“It’s not any other external actor,” he went on. “What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance’s speech is worth revisiting, as he went on to reference the case of a British man who was silently praying on his own within one of the country’s abortion zones.
“And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs. A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
“After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son,” Vance said.
“He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”
“Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no. This last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”
“Free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” an impassioned Vance said to shocked world leaders who looked on in astonishment as he continued to hold their feet to the fire, before declaring: “To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice.”
There was a headlong rush to carry out damage control in the wake of Vance’s speech. The BBC and others reported that the Vice-President had been accused of “spreading misinformation” about buffer zones, while the Guardian decried Vance as an “extremist.” His comments were “dangerous” and so on and so forth – but where was the lie? The conviction of Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, only serves to further validate what Vance was saying.
It was the British State, after all, who brought a harmless, peaceful retiree to court. The State won their case against Tossici-Bolt, which was, of course, paid for by the British taxpayer, resulting in her being ordered to pay costs of £20,000 for two charges of breaking a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO).
The reason the amount was so high was because the prosecution had spent almost £65,000 on a KC and junior during the two-day magistrates’ court trial. Seriously though, asking a 64-year-old retiree to come up with £20,000 for holding a sign is downright disgusting.
Not to worry, though, because, as the judge suggested, the retired scientist could always sell her house to raise the cash. The vindictiveness of it all seems breathtaking, independent of your views on abortion.
Prior to the conviction, the US State Department took the unusual step of releasing a statement on X saying it was “monitoring” the case of Tossici-Bolt. The Telegraph reported a source familiar with trade talks, who said he believed that there will be “no free trade” for Britain “without free speech.” In the wake of the verdict, the Department issued a comment on X, saying that it was “disappointed” by the court’s ruling:
It’s probably only a matter of time before we see similar cases crop up in Ireland. A woman in the North became the first person to be arrested under Northern Ireland’s buffer zone last year, and her case remains ongoing. Retired pastor Clive Johnston, 76, is also embroiled in a legal battle for carrying out an “open air service” with an abortion zone at Coleraine Hospital. There will likely be more cases to come.
On issues like abortion, there is a stifling consensus within our Government and our media. The Irish media did the job of campaigners in the 2018 abortion referendum. Repealers could have run a non-existent campaign, and still won by a landslide, thanks to a one-sided Irish media who employed personal stories in one direction to garner public sympathy. In the Dáil for instance, we have one single female pro-life politician who has consistently voted that way (and against abortion censorship zones), namely Carol Nolan.
The voices supporting abortion on demand are not the ones on the backfoot. Although they do have a tendency to paint themselves as the ones leading an uprising from the dark pits of oppression, they have the support of the entire establishment and media class. Those actually leading a rebellion are courageous individuals like Livia Toscani-Bolt and Isabel Vaughan-Spruce and Adam Smith-Connor, who, as we have seen, pay with their reputations and their wallets for being pro-life.
JD Vance and the US State Department are welcome voices on this issue because such people will receive absolutely minimal support from our own leaders.
As Vance said himself, to many Americans on the other side Atlantic, it “looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.”
There are honest conversations which you simply cannot have here in Ireland or in the UK. For example, like a conversation about how abortion is simply not like any other form of healthcare because no other form of healthcare involves the destruction of a human life at some stage of pre-natal development. Or what about a conversation on financial, moral or material support in pregnancy, and the organisations out there that can provide it.
Over 200,000 abortions happen every single year in Britain – and 10,000 here – and still, the media headline this morning in places like the Journal is how we are “exporting abortion to Europe” as 5,000 women travelled overseas across Europe, with 244 travelling from Ireland. Honestly? Over 40,000 abortions later, after Irish voters were promised and coaxed with the “safe and rare” tagline, and this is the best “investigating” our press can come up with? It’s a joke.
If we were serious about free speech, we would be asking the question: why shouldn’t women like Livia Tossici-Bolt try to offer women a better answer than abortion? Especially given that a BBC-commissioned poll from the UK in 2022 found that 15 per cent of UK women aged 18-44 had faced pressure to abort their unborn child when they did not want to, while five per cent had faced physical violence intended to induce a miscarriage.
Why shouldn’t a post-abortive father like Adam Smith-Connor be allowed to engage others in conversation about the potential psychological ramifications? In any sane democracy, these conversations should be fair game.
We are facing a nefarious slide towards State censorship – British and Irish governments are actively suspicious of free speech. Daily, the push to impose careful regulation on ordinary people grows. I, for one, am glad that the US State Department seems to be taking notice.