One of the key focuses of the extraordinary speech given by U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security conference was the inordinate suppression of pro-life freedom of expression – specifically laws and police actions that have targeted silent prayer.
His remarks, which caused consternation amongst European elites, took aim at the broad threat to free speech that Vance believes is menacing European democracy – and also highlighted his immigration concerns in the wake of yet another attack on innocent civilians, with the Vice President saying that “no voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants”.
On the issue of the clampdown on the right to freedom of speech and protest for those who oppose abortion, Vance was particularly strong: highlighting the case of Adam Smith-Connor who was arrested, brought to court and penalised – ordered to pay £9,000 in legal costs – for silently praying for his own aborted son near an abortion clinic.
“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-Connor, 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 the unborn son”, Vance said.
Predictably, the liberal press in Britain nearly lost their minds. Abortion has become a sort of sacrament to the progressive political and media establishment, and, even as the numbers of abortion both here and in the UK tragically spiral higher and higher, the unwritten – and written – rule is that no-one can blaspheme against the “right” to abortion. It is the great sacred cow, more than the trans issue, to a greater extent even than immigration, and criticism or challenge shall not be brooked.
“JD Vance has been labelled an “extremist” after he launched a broadside against the UK’s efforts to protect women seeking an abortion,” the Guardian wailed, describing Vance’s speech as “a wide-ranging tirade against Europe” and saying his comments on pro-life censorship were being lambasted “inaccurate and misogynistic by a number of groups, politicians and governments.”
Does a woman’s “right” to seek abortion need protecting? There were 251,377 abortions in England and Wales in 2022 – the last year for which data is available – official figures from the Department of Health and Social Care show: the highest since the Abortion Act was introduced in 1967, and a rise of 17% on the 2021 figure.
1 in 4 pregnancies in England and Wales end in abortion, The Times reported in 2021, and the numbers have increased rapidly since then. Scotland is no better, with a record number of abortions taking place in 2022 – a 19% rise on previous years.
Access to abortion clearly isn’t a problem. If a small number of pro-life people seek to offer women help, or simply stand in silent prayer at abortion centres, and that leads a handful of women to seek help to continue with their pregnancy, it is entirely unreasonable to criminalise such actions.
Clearly, just as happened in Ireland, the establishment of so-called “safe access zones” are clearly simply driven by malice, petty authoritarianism, and the wholly despicable desire to punch down on those who hold a contrary view. In order to sell such harsh restrictions to the public a false narrative is spun about the need to stop non-existent harassment and aggression.
Asked by BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg to respond to Vance’s remarks, Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, said: “Let’s be clear, we don’t have blasphemy laws in the UK. That’s the right thing. I say that, as a Christian, no one is arrested for what they are praying about. The example he [Vance] gave was about making sure people can access health care.”
Except that is not true. Adam Smith-Connor was arrested precisely because of what he was praying about. As was Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, arrested for “praying silently in her head” near a closed abortion facility, in an interaction that went globally viral.
Although she was cleared of those charges, Vaughan-Spruce was arrested AGAIN for the same actions – around the same time Vance made his remarks.
For those now in denial as to what the laws passed in the UK establishing abortion buffer zones actually prohibited – the British Home Office published a useful guide on 31st October 2024, the day the law was passed, which explains “from today, a 150-metre boundary will be in place around all clinics and hospitals offering abortion services known as a ‘safe access zone’.”
They explain that “within these boundaries it is now a criminal offence to intentionally or recklessly influence any person’s decision to access or facilitate abortion services at an abortion clinic” – and that could include “handing out anti-abortion leaflets” and “protesting against abortion rights”.
The Home office then says “this could also cover prayer, including: silent prayer, holding vigils, and any behaviour where someone is intentionally trying to – or recklessly acting in a way that might – influence a person accessing the service.”
“Anyone found guilty of breaking the new laws will face an unlimited fine,” they warn.
Vance’s speech certainly seemed to spark a new debate online on the abortion zones, with columnist Andrew Neil pointing to just how ludicrous Adam Smith-Connor’s arrest was.
In relation to Scotland, and the denials from the Scottish Greens in regard to the claim in Vance’s speech that 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”, a photo of said letter effectively ended that debate.
Note the prompt at the end of the letter urging residents to report their neighbours to the police – designed to prompt a nation of petty snitches. It’s deplorable stuff.
Vance didn’t mention Ireland, because he might not be aware that our abortion buffer zones were passed with a thumping Dáil majority to great media fanfare and crowing from abortion supporters who like nothing better than censoring and criminalising entirely peaceful prayer activists who might wish to pray for both mother and baby.
At the time Ireland’s abortion buffer zones were being passed, I wrote that then Health Minister had made the criminalisation of pro-life vigils a priority despite the massive waiting lists for healthcare and the general chaos in the system because he would “get lots of media kudos and NGO acclaim for coming down heavy on those pesky praying pro-lifers”.
That was therefore “top of his agenda. Your granny’s cataracts, which are slowly blinding her, can wait.”
It doesn’t seem to matter to Donnelly, or the abortion extremists demanding this bill, that there is no evidence to back up claims that a law is required to crack down on pro-life vigils.
Given that lack of evidence, it is hard to see how anything but a great deal of malice and a desire to punish pro-life activists is the primary motivation behind moves to criminalise peaceful and prayerful vigils at abortion centres.
It is now indisputable that the allegations made by groups campaigning for the law have been shown to be untrue, including claims that women were being harassed, and that pro-life prayer vigils were being informed as to when abortions were being carried out.
At first, it was claimed that new legislation was needed because women were being harassed while entering abortion centres. Then the Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris said clearly that there was ‘no evidence to suggest that there is threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour directed towards persons utilising such services’. He also added that existing public order laws were sufficient to deal with any cases of harassment should they arise.”
The Garda Commissioner wrote all of this to the Minister for Health, to clarify matters, one presumes. But the Minister for Health didn’t want to listen to the Gardaí’s evidence, it seems.
So now we have the Minister for Health bringing forward legislation, without evidence, simply to appease those who want to punch down at pro-lifers. Given that there is, in the words of the Garda Commissioner, no evidence of any wrongdoing from mostly silent, prayerful pro-life vigils, it is hard to see how anything but malice is motivating this proposal.
The law has since passed, of course, and now sits on the statue books, a malevolent bid to silence pro-life prayer or vigil or peaceful protest, and send a warning to anyone who is thinking of quietly saying a rosary for mothers and babies at an abortion centre.
In fact, barrister Grace Sullivan correctly asked if the Government, given the prohibition, was “somewhat surprisingly endorsing the power of prayer to persuade a woman to change her mind and therefore prohibiting such activity within 100 metres of a designated premises in totality?”.
Michael Collins TD said in the Dáil that “the motivation behind the Bill has been clear from the get-go. It has nothing to do with public safety. It is about silencing pro-life opposition to the Government’s abortion law and nothing else. That is abundantly clear when you take a close look at what it proposes.”
No-one has yet been arrested under the Irish law, but, as the tide shifts against the suppression of free speech, isn’t it time the Irish government realised it is embarrassing itself and simply scrap this malicious, baseless, censorial piece of legislation.