“How could my presence, standing here, possibly in any way, shape or form be considered harassment or intimidation?”
“It’s the praying that you’ve admitted to, Sir.”
Thou shalt not pray, it seems, has now become official dogma in Britain.
The exchange noted above took place on a cold November morning on a street in Bournemouth, where Adam Smith–Connor – a father of two and an Afghanistan veteran – had stopped to pray. The street was within a so-called ‘buffer zone’ – really a censorship zone – imposed by the local council around an abortion facility. The zone bans the expression of any form of approval or disapproval of abortion, including through prayer, handing out leaflets, or crossing oneself.
Adam had been present in the zone, which covers several streets, for only a few minutes when he was approached by officers.
It wasn’t an out-of-the-ordinary activity for Adam. He had been volunteering near the abortion facility since 2019 as part of a group which prays and offers leaflets about charitable support available to women who express interest in finding alternative options to abortion. Removing the tribal spectacles of abortion politics that can warp our views of such measures, it’s not hard to view this as a noble cause. Almost one in five women who have an abortion in the U.K. do so against their will, according to the BBC. If women would like to avoid abortion if only they had financial, emotional or practical support, then it is right to supply these needs. This, surely, is the real ‘pro-choice’.
However, the introduction of buffer zones across five local councils, and soon to be rolled out across the country at the behest of the Conservative Government under the Public Order Act 2023, has forbidden Adam’s group from engaging in this charitable activity in Bournemouth. So they don’t. Adam wasn’t speaking to any women that day. He wasn’t even looking at them. He prayed silently, with his back to the clinic, standing by a tree to ensure he was out of the way and not bothering anyone. He stopped to pray in his mind, rather than expressing anything out loud, since that would have been forbidden in the censorship zone.
He prayed specifically about his own experience of abortion. Adam has participated in the procedure as part of his medical training in the past. And 22 years ago, he paid for his girlfriend to have an abortion – a decision that grieves him deeply now. He prayed about his son, Jacob, who he lost – and for the men and women facing these same difficult decisions today.
You might think Adam is abhorrent for his views. Or you might sympathise with a grieving man. Maybe you agree with him that no woman in the U.K. should feel like she has no other option.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that Adam was penalised for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. He admitted to council officers who approached him that he was praying in his head. Game over. Adam was issued a fine, because he was thinking thoughts that were disapproved of by the authorities.
He didn’t pay the fine. This army vet had fought in Afghanistan because he believed in the principles of freedom that the U.K. had championed – democracy, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought.
To pay the fine, he believed, would be complicit with the erosion of these fundamental freedoms secured both in international and domestic law. It simply shouldn’t be illegal to pray anywhere in the U.K.
Fast forward eight months of legal uncertainty and Adam was in court on Wednesday. He entered a ‘not guilty’ plea. His trial date is fixed for November.
It’s a terrible cliché to invoke Orwell when describing the news these days. But one can hardly fail to compare this dystopian tale to the activities of the Thought Police in 1984. For all the Home Secretary’s commitments to stamp out wokery in public order regulations, the suppression of free speech in abortion clinic ‘buffer zones’ has gone from bad to worse under this Government. The ‘a’ word – abortion – can cause politicians to lose their minds when it comes to freedom of expression. Protecting free speech for gender critical feminism wins more favour and applause. But Adam’s belief in protecting babies in the womb, and supporting women to avoid abortion, is not illegal. The right to free speech exists to protect those beliefs that are not currently in vogue.
As the Government prepares guidance for the role out of the Public Order Act 2023, it has a chance to clarify that even in these censorship zones, the human right to think heretical thoughts inside one’s own head remains in tact.
Lois McLatchie writes for ADF UK, the charity backing Adam Smith-Connor’s legal defense. Find out more, and add your support here.
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”He admitted to council officers who approached him that he was praying in his head.”
I remember at a local Church discussion group discussing what prayer is? when you pray does it go anywhere? is it like some spiritual mobile phone system? or is it an internal process in your mind? And as you can imagine whist there were various comments and thoughts there were no real conclusions or confirmations. And so with these sorts of cases I would be interested to know how the law defines praying? Do the police have an answer to the mystery and enigma of prayer that eluded our local discussion group?
Certainly if anyone approached me and asked if I was praying in my head? I would ask them to define prayer as, following our local group discussions, I do not really know what the word means to officialdom?
Nobody should have to lie but perhaps if this chap had said he was meditating or thinking it wouldn’t be an outright lie. Maybe being so honest was his downfall, I don’t know. One thing I especially respect him for is not paying the fine. ”One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” MLK
No NO NO. Unless we speak the truth, we are going to be trampled underfoot. Yes we are going to get attacked and possibly prosecuted. But it is our duty as moral human beings to say no to evil. And this is evil.
Yes, well said.
Exactly “When tyranny becomes law rebellion becomes duty”.
RESIST DEFY DO NOT COMPLY!
Good point. Is there specific sentence construction to prayer that categorically defines it as prayer, as opposed to more general language/thought which seeks support/encouragement from outside the self? Does a god or deity have to be invoked in order cement the definition and if so, which one(s) (not forgetting that Hindus and some pagans have several)? Which particular religious denomination(s) does the criminal act of thoughtprayer apply to – or is it all of them? Is a general spiritual belief outside of the doctrinal religions also included, and if so, how is that categorised? What about those who consider prayer as a fundamental part of a way of being rather than simply an act or thought? How to you get around the Equalities Act and the idea of freedom of religious belief? Which Act or Instrument specifically identifies the crime of thoughtprayer? I’m sure the court will carefully consider all these issues and more before sentencing this dangerous ‘criminal’.
You’re right. This could be a very interesting trial in November if his lawyers are thinking along the same lines. For example:
What does Adam mean by ‘praying’? As he admitted ‘praying’, the only definition that matters is his definition.
Presumably he means something like ‘speaking to God’, which is a dictionary definition.
But nobody can speak to God if God doesn’t exist.
Therefore, in order to prove that he was in reality actually praying, they would have to prove that God exists!
Adam’s lawyers could get Richard Dawkins as an expert witness!
Or is the court going to decide that people can now be fined merely for possibly having a delusion, and nothing more – in others words, fined for believing he was praying, even though his belief may have been a delusion. In which case, what if you believe that merely thinking is ‘speaking to God’. You’d be fined for thinking, even though it’s impossible to stop yourself thinking!
The trial should be fun!
You are making a fundamental mistake, the Council will have to prove that he was protesting or similar. Standing in the street is not a protest. To protest you need signs, speeches, and cause trouble. He had none of these things. He spoke to no one, he was silent. Remember Just Stop Oil have been blocking roads with the help of the Police. The prosecution will fail, there is zero evidence of anything. I want to see their video (they will have one) of him! The trouble is he was doing nothing.
The fact that the police see fit to seek the prosecution of this man under a Tory Government may, to some, be seen as a testimony to the proposition that the Tory Party are fully signed up to the Marxist woke agenda.
Useful idiots are being used in all walks of life ! The humanity has been groomed out of them , the police who wrote him his ticket are the same police who manhandled that young girl recently . Amazing when attending the London street lootings they turned up in hi vis vests & their standard peaked caps ! No sign of the Robo Cop Brigade used on peaceful protesters during the Plandemic . “Well I never”
This is nothing about abortion and everything about ‘thought policing’. It’s absolutely outrageous and once again I’m beyond disgusted with the UK police. They won’t lift a bloody finger to remove/fine/arrest these eco nutjobs who block the roads so people can’t make their vital journeys but they can descend on and persecute a man for chuffing *thinking*!!
Perhaps if he’d fibbed and said he was meditating, reading a book ( is reading the Bible in public also illegal nowadays?? ) or had headphones on and said he was listening to music they’d have left him alone?? The police disgust me. They’ve obviously redefined what a bloody ”crime” is!
However, the introduction of buffer zones across five local councils, and soon to be rolled out across the country at the behest of the Fake Conservative Government under the Public Order Act 2023
The destruction of children is now normal
First they come for your words and decide which ones you cannot use, because not using them will prevent you from having the thoughts you are not meant to have. Then when that is deemed insufficient, they come for your actual thoughts that they have decided you must be having. ———–I was going to think that we should keep using fossil fuels but decided not to think of that as there are more and more thought police on the beat.
The f-ing Pendle Witch trials were fairer than this!
Do we really live in a “modern” era that is many times more ignorant than then?
Even the courts of the 17th and 18th centuries would have thrown this case out!
Beyond medieval!!
As my old mum used to say “You know what thought did? It planted a feather and thought it would grow into a hen” ———You cannot have any non-Liberal Progressive thoughts incase they grow into supporting Trump, Brexit or Gas central Heating.
This nonsense has to stop. To be even taken seriously is to give it legs. The idea that you can be arrested for praying silently is totally batsh*t bonkers as Katie Hopkins would probably say. One’s connection with the divine, with one’s spiritual side, is a totally personal affair. It causes no harm to people or property. By making it a crime (ffs!), the state intrudes upon the sanctity of one’s relationship with god or whatever you want to call it. State interference in our lives, ignoring sovereign boundaries, has gone too far. We must resist and we can do that by ridiculing them (they don’t like it up ’em, Mr. Mannering!) and mass prayer-ins of silent meditation to push back against this. I’m not having it. They can all take a long walk over a short bridge!
To think if he had popped into Brum and been caught doing a bit of shoplifting, as long as he had done it less than 20 times, he would have been let off, no court case, nothing.BUT do a bit of silent praying!, the full force of the law comes down.
Do you know something I think I prefer the silent prayer to theft, but that’s just me. It seems that our Politicians are anti God, and anti anyone who believes in God, but are pro, theft, abortion and as we know child grooming in schools.
Is it too extreme to conclude we are being lead by an immoral and decidedly satanic set of elite where the breaking of basic laws are dressed up as somehow kind and decent, and those who follow the basic laws are to be humiliated and constantly soaked for cash.
Think of the costs and the time involved in sending this man to court?, think of the real criminals who are not being charged for real crimes whilst the Government and Police persue the abolition of Christianity.
Spot on Hester I would also add that abortion is theft, theft of a life that no one has the right to take. It’s the ultimate theft.
I’m not sure why he didn’t tell them to mind their own business. Still it’s beyond belief that one can be fined for standing silently. Except that after the events of the last three years it isn’t. So much for freedom.
What about sitting in the middle of the road and blocking the traffic to the abortion clinic?
Council officers. Pah. He should have completely ignored them. Zero authority. Even if it were a policeman, representing the law of the land, it’s quite possible to respond with a simple “how many I help you, Officer”, and not be under any obligation to them. Well, he spoke to them, I don’t blame him, why shouldn’t he have done, he did nothing wrong. Councils and their “employees” think they have a lot more power than they do, and many people go along with it.
But, what is absolutely unconscionable is that this has progressed as far as it has.
“Adam had been present in the zone, which covers several streets, for only a few minutes when he was approached by officers.”
Presumably “officers” means police. How is it that plod can always turn up to invoke some Orwellian guidance but when real crimes take place they are nowhere to be seen? What took the plod to the ‘buffer zone’? Is it there normal place for chill-axing during a busy shift?
It looks like plod are on a roll what with the West Yorkshire neanderthals arresting a sixteen year old girl for her comment that a female police suited person “looks like my lesbian nana.” All seven of them. Absolutely despicable.
Totally, hux. And here they are. Look at the state of them! Load of shameful muppets. What I find ironic is that if that policewoman thug is indeed a lesbian after all of that then she’s wasn’t exactly demonstrating any ‘pride’ during that performance was she? Presumably one needs to be taking part in a parade in order for comments such as that to be allowed to slide! Call someone a homosexual during any of the other 11 months of the year and your goose is cooked.
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1690417757215457280
Blasphemy against the sacrament of abortion will not be tolerated
“Brother you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking”
Eat your heart out, Dino, and stop standing on that corner
It’s not whether you believe in abortion or not it’s whether you believe in free speech or not.