Emma has strong feelings about abortion: She wears T-shirts that say things like “Pro-life and Proud.” A devout Catholic, she is a trustee of a pro-life activism group and regularly holds planning meetings at her flat in Edinburgh, Scotland. On her way to work at an office in the center of town, the 24-year-old passes the abortion facility at nearby Chalmers Hospital. Sometimes, she prays with rosary beads as she walks by.
But now she’s worried she could get arrested in her neighborhood—for wearing that T-shirt, for holding those meetings, or even for praying in her head.
On October 4, Emma, who asked not to be named, got a letter from the Scottish government. Addressed “Dear Resident,” its purpose was to alert her that her home, due to its proximity to the hospital, is now in an abortion censorship zone.
This is due to the UK’s brand-new “Safe Access” law, which came into effect September 24 and made it a criminal offense to do anything within 200 meters of an abortion facility that could “influence” someone’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate an abortion. In the Scottish government’s letter, Emma read that even “activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.”
“You can report a group or an individual that you think is breaking the law,” the letter added, before providing instructions on how to do so.
Emma couldn’t believe her eyes. The law carries a maximum fine of £10,000 (over $13,000). In June, it passed in The Scottish Parliament by 118 votes to one, following in the footsteps of Northern Ireland, which became the first country in the UK to enforce abortion censorship legislation last year. The rest of the UK is doing the same: On October 31, a similar law will come into effect in England and Wales; it was passed by Parliament in 2023. In these countries, the fine will be unlimited.
All of this legislation codifies—on a national level—a trend that has been creeping across the UK for a decade. Ten years ago, in 2014, Parliament empowered local councils to create and police their own antisocial behavior laws. The intention was to enhance “the professional capabilities and integrity of the police.” But since 2018, five UK districts have used these powers to aggressively limit what people can do, say, and even think, near abortion clinics. I spoke to four people who have fallen afoul of these restrictions, and a disturbing pattern emerged.
In November 2022, Adam Smith-Connor, now 51, a physiotherapist and veteran, was interrogated by local authorities in Bournemouth, on the south coast of England, which had recently introduced an abortion censorship zone. His alleged crime was silently praying for three minutes while 50 meters from an abortion clinic. When council officers asked, “What is the nature of your prayer?” he replied: “I am praying for my son who is deceased,” referring to his unborn child that he and his then-girlfriend decided to abort two decades ago.
Smith-Connor was charged with breaching the censorship zone. Earlier this month, on October 16, he was convicted and ordered to pay £9,000 (roughly $11,700) toward the prosecution’s legal fees. He set up a page on a crowdfunding website, which raised the fee within hours. He and the lawyer supporting him are considering an appeal.
The same day, also in Bournemouth, the trial of Livia Tossici-Bolt was due to begin. The retired scientist, who’s 64, faces the same charges as Smith-Connor, but her alleged offense is standing outside an abortion clinic in March 2023 with a sign that simply read: “Here to talk, if you want.” (Her trial was postponed to March 2025, to give both legal teams time to consider the implications of Smith-Connor’s verdict.)
Around the same time, in Birmingham—the UK’s second-largest city—Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 47, was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. (More about her case later.)
Watch Vaughan-Spruce tell her story below:
Meanwhile Father Sean Gough, 34, was charged with two counts of silent prayer in the same city, as well as parking near an abortion clinic with an “Unborn lives matter” bumper sticker, and holding a sign that read: “Praying for free speech.”
And just over a year ago, in October 2023, a pro-life volunteer named Patrick Parkes, 57, was praying silently outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham when police threatened him with a fine.
Their instruction to him? “Kindly move elsewhere outside the exclusion zone where you’ve got your human rights.”
The UK may not have the First Amendment—but it does have a centuries-old tradition of defending free expression, as well as the 1998 Human Rights Act. In theory, the latter is supposed to protect Brits’ “absolute rights,” including freedoms of thought, speech, conscience, and religion. But in recent years, the UK has become increasingly censorious. Authorities have arrested citizens for accidentally sharing misinformation, and for dressing up as a terrorist for Halloween. In Britain, people who post “offensive” comments online can get harsher prison sentences than sex offenders.
As far back as 2010, a man was convicted of sending a “menacing” tweet, after he posted: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!” (The conviction was overturned in 2012.)
In 2014, when the Conservative government introduced the “Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act,” it assumed that local authorities would create their own criminal offenses for relatively minor public nuisances, such as leaving trash on the street and dog fouling. “Parliament certainly didn’t intend for this act to be used in the way that it’s currently being used,” said Jeremiah Igunnubole, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom who’s supporting Smith-Connor, Tossici-Bolt, Vaughan-Spruce, and Father Gough. He explains that the law allows local councilors to play “judge, jury, executioner” by introducing and enforcing their own laws with “little to no oversight.”
As a result, five local councils across the UK—Manchester, Birmingham, and Bournemouth, and two London districts: Ealing and Richmond Upon Thames—have been free to implement abortion censorship zones.
The language of these ordinances often explicitly targets religious activity. In September 2022, the authorities in Birmingham, for instance, banned “any act of approval or disapproval or attempted acts of approval or disapproval, with respect to issues related to abortion services, by any means” within the zone, then cited prayer as an example. Meanwhile Bournemouth’s local legislation—introduced in October 2022—bans “vigils” where attendees “audibly pray, recite scripture, genuflect, sprinkle holy water on the ground or cross themselves if they perceive a service-users [sic] is passing by.”
The results border on farce.
Father Gough, of St John the Evangelist in Banbury, was summoned to a police station in Birmingham in December 2022, after officers questioned him outside an abortion clinic in the city. He was grilled on what message his clerical clothing had sent to service-users within the zone. He was also asked what he was praying about. Earlier this month, Father Gough told The Free Press what he told the police: That he was “praying that God’s grace will come upon” those inside the facility.
The police officer asked: “What does the word ‘grace’ mean?”
After that, Father Gough was charged with “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users.” Before a trial was scheduled, the authorities decided to “discontinue” the charges because they didn’t have enough evidence—but warned that “if further evidence becomes available in the near future, the prosecution may be reconsidered.” Father Gough wanted to clear his name completely, so he exercised his right to go to trial. A judge acquitted him of all charges.
Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in December 2022, when she was standing alone outside the same abortion clinic, after it had closed. She was not holding a sign, or leaflets, or religious objects. After searching her body and hair, the police took Vaughan-Spruce to the station and showed her photographs of herself, standing outside the clinic on earlier occasions. They asked if she had been praying when they were taken. She said she didn’t know.
“Sometimes I was praying, sometimes I got distracted and thought about my lunch, and from looking at the photograph, I can’t tell,” Vaughan-Spruce told me. “For someone to be intimidated by what they think someone else might be thinking, it is so nonsensical.”
Like Father Gough, she later heard that the authorities had decided to “discontinue” the charges. She also decided to go to trial to prove her innocence. It took a district judge less than five minutes to formally acquit her of all charges.
But come March 2023, Vaughan-Spruce was arrested again. “You’ve said you’re engaging in prayer, which is the offense,” the officer explained, while taking her into custody. She was later released, but one of the conditions of her bail was that she refrain from visiting a wider zone around the abortion censorship zone, which included a church she attends.
In December 2023, Vaughan-Spruce sued the police for two wrongful arrests and false imprisonments, as well as assault and battery (referring to the unlawful search of her person), and breaching her human rights. West Midlands Police agreed to a settlement of £13,000 (around $16,800). But Vaughan-Spruce said she’s not concerned about the money—she’s concerned that abortion censorship zones will trample the rights of even more people like her when the national legislation comes into effect this Halloween.
In the U.S., a small number of antiabortion activists give the majority a bad reputation—by obstructing entry, vandalizing property, or even resorting to violence through arson, shootings, and explosives. Yet no such incidents have been recorded in the UK, where antiabortion activism is a tame affair.
In fact, most pro-life volunteers, as they refer to themselves, don’t even describe their activities outside abortion clinics as activism.
“I’ve never protested outside of abortion centers,” Vaughan-Spruce told me. For the past 20 years, she has stood near abortion centers only “to offer help and to pray.” In 2011, Vaughan-Spruce started a local pro-life group and told me that “dozens and dozens” of women “have accepted the help we’ve offered and managed to continue a much-wanted pregnancy, where before they felt their only option was to have an abortion.”
I spoke to multiple women who live in the UK and feel they have been helped by pro-life volunteers. They included a 42-year-old who moved to the UK from India when she was 27 and asked us to refer to her as “Sonia.” When she learned she was pregnant in 2013, she was living paycheck to paycheck in a single room with her husband and 8-year-old daughter. “I’m an immigrant, and I would not be able to get any help and support from the government,” she told me. Sonia visited her physician, and told him the pregnancy left her “very worried about the future.” He gave her a leaflet for abortion.
Sonia wanted to have her baby, but felt as if she had no choice but to book an appointment.
When she arrived at the clinic in Ealing, Sonia saw volunteers from the Good Counsel Network, which supports women in crisis pregnancies. They were praying. For medical reasons, the abortion was postponed.
On her way out of the clinic, a volunteer asked her: “Do you need any help?”
“I literally started crying,” Sonia told me. “I said, ‘I do need help, but I don’t know if there is any genuine help available.’ ”
The organization gave Sonia support that enabled her to have the baby, a boy, and live with her family in “a proper two-bedroom house”—paying the £450 ($585) monthly difference in rent for five years until she was able to get back to work. The Good Counsel Network provided everything from baby milk to diapers, and it would even send a volunteer to look after Sonia’s children if she had to go out for an appointment.
Her son is 11 now, “and he’s everything to us,” Sonia said.
A spokesperson for The Good Counsel Network estimated that the organization has helped 1,200 women in similar circumstances. “They’re not forcing anyone,” Sonia says of pro-life volunteers. “They’re just peacefully standing there. . . If you don’t want help, you can just ignore them and walk on.”
Nevertheless, those who advocate for abortion censorship zones claim they are essential to protect women from antiabortion fanatics.
“The behavior we’ve seen outside of our clinics includes spitting, calling women ‘murderers,’ crying out ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ to women as they enter or leave, filming or taking photographs, and handing out false medical information,” stated Louise McCudden, head of external affairs for MSI Reproductive Choices, which manages over 60 abortion clinics across the UK.
It’s worth noting that spitting at someone or verbally abusing them are already considered illegal under existing British law. But many advocates believe these laws don’t go far enough to protect women from antiabortion activism.
They include a clinic manager for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, another leading UK abortion provider, who told reporters in 2023 that, in her experience, antiabortion activists outside clinics are “not particularly shouting, and they’re not waving banners”—rather they’re “loudly praying.” She said that, in some ways, that’s “more intimidating, because it’s done loud enough that you can hear, but quietly enough that you’re not disturbing anybody apart from who’s walking in.”
In recent years, authorities have widely accepted logic like this. Take the case of Sonia’s district, Ealing, which became the first local council to create an abortion censorship zone in 2018. The council leader said it was necessary to protect “women from harassment and intimidation”—which has been a criminal offense in the UK for decades. Yet, a response from London’s Metropolitan Police to a November 2017 Freedom of Information request— seen by The Free Press—shows that in 23 years of pro-life vigils at the Ealing clinic, there wasn’t a single related arrest.
When national authorities looked into the issue, they found limited evidence that antiabortion activists were threatening women. In 2018, Sajid Javid, then Britain’s home secretary, investigated antiabortion activity outside clinics and concluded that “the main activities reported to us. . . include praying, displaying banners, and handing out leaflets.”
The allegations of more aggressive behavior—such as “handing out model foetuses, displaying graphic images, following people, blocking their paths and even assaulting them”—were “not the norm.”
Javid concluded that the existing law was sufficient and “introducing national buffer zones would not be a proportionate response.”
And yet, that is exactly what happened, under the Conservative Party’s watch. It did then attempt to introduce protection for silent prayer. But the new Labour government, which was elected in July, moved ahead without that protection. The newly appointed Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips said: “We will not sit back and tolerate harassment, abuse, and intimidation as people exercise their legal right to healthcare, which is why we have fast-tracked this measure to get it up and running without further delay.”
The Scottish government, too, has argued that abortion buffer zones are necessary because of “an increase in antiabortion activity.” But The Free Press has seen Police Scotland records from January 2020 to December 2022—obtained through Freedom of Information requests—that suggest this “activity” has been grossly mischaracterized.
In the vicinity of Chalmers Sexual Health Centre, the abortion clinic Emma walks past on her way to work, there were 16 recorded incidents of antiabortion activity between 2020 and 2022. Seven were reports of the mere presence of antiabortion protesters. One was an accusation of “shouting abuse,” which the police responded to, and recorded “no issues.” Three were reports of people with leaflets or banners. Again, when the police looked into it, they found “no issues.” One was a report of “religious fuelled hate,” which the police recorded as an “anonymous report, no further action.” One was an allegation that “someone” was filming attendees of the clinic, and the police gave advice to the caller. Another was a report of “pro-choice graffiti” (“to be investigated as vandalism”), and two were calls from pro-life vigil attendees: one to notify police of their compliance with the law, the other to report harassment from a member of the public.
The police chose not to follow up on this last report, which hints at a wider issue that plagues the UK’s justice system. In August, polling company YouGov found that the public widely believes the UK is subject to “two-tier policing,” where those who fall foul of progressive orthodoxy are treated more harshly because of their viewpoints. For instance, many believe anti-immigration protests are policed more fiercely than pro-Palestine protests.
Father Gough told me about an experience that would support the idea of “two-tier policing.”
In February 2020, he was praying outside the Birmingham abortion clinic when a local man, Noel Greene, approached him in his van. Father Gough recognized Greene, who, he said, regularly harassed pro-life volunteers. He began filming as Greene got out of his vehicle and walked toward Father Gough, accusing him of “bullying girls,” calling him a “wanker” and “a fucking prick,” and asking whether the women having abortions had “been raped by a priest.”
At one point Greene says: “I’ll rip your fucking throat out.”
Watch Father Gough's confrontation with Noel Greene below:
Under British law, this short encounter would appear to involve multiple criminal offenses: common assault; threatening, abusive or insulting words, and making someone afraid of “immediate unlawful violence.” All of which are more serious if found to be aggravated by religious hostility.
If Greene were convicted of any of the above, he could be looking at a two-year prison sentence. Father Gough shared a video of the incident with the police and asked to press charges, but instead they instructed Greene to write the priest a letter of apology which arrived six months later.
“Dear Sir/Madam,” the letter began, “I offer my sincere apologies that things escalated and you in any way felt threatened. This was not my intention.”
Father Gough decided to let the matter drop.
One of the things that scared Emma, when she got her letter from the Scottish government, was that the law seemed arbitrary. My reporting suggests that her fears aren’t baseless. For the last few years, the rules governing abortion censorship zones have been—to put it lightly—inconsistent.
When Father Gough was praying with a “free speech” sign, at first the police told him he was acting lawfully; later, different officers claimed otherwise. Police told Smith-Connor he could continue to pray silently near an abortion facility since “this is England, and you are allowed to stand here and do that”—then a different community officer issued him a £100 fine for the same behavior. Vaughan-Spruce was acquitted in court but arrested less than a year later for the same “offense” of silent prayer.
“The rule of law requires that legislation like this is clear, consistent, and predictable,” Igunnubole told me. “But normal people cannot understand at which point they will be incurring criminal liability.”
In many ways, the punishment is the process. Those Igunnubole is supporting spoke about the enormous stress police investigations imposed on them and their families. For instance Smith-Connor, who served in the British Army Reserve for 20 years, tells me that he became “very upset and emotional” during his trial, because “this isn’t what England stands for and represents, certainly not the England I grew up in.”
Smith-Connor worries he’s raising his two young children in a “country where thoughtcrime is a real thing.”
Vaughan-Spruce believes that censorship zones should concern everyone, pro-life and pro-choice alike. “It might be Christians today,” she said, but “it could be anyone tomorrow who falls foul of what the government deems is appropriate to think.”
Madeleine Kearns is an associate editor at The Free Press. Read her piece “The Young Catholic Women Bringing Back Veils.” Follow her on X @MadeleineKearns.