A Christian pro-life worker arrested twice for praying silently outside an abortion clinic in England has received 13,000 pounds (16,858 USD) from police for her “unjust treatment and the breach of her human rights” by officers, according to legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of pro-life organization UK March for Life, had filed the claim against West Midlands Police for “two wrongful arrests and false imprisonments; assault and battery in relation to an intrusive search of her person; and for a breach of her human rights both in respect to the arrests, and to the onerous bail conditions imposed on her,” according to ADF International, which supported her in the case.
Three police officers arrested Vaughan-Spruce in November 2022 after she prayed silently while standing near British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) Robert Clinic in Kings Norton. A YouTube video of the incident shows a police officer questioning Vaughan-Spruce.
“What are you here for today?” he asks.
“Physically I am just standing here,” Vaughan-Spruce replies.
“Okay, why here of all places? I know you don’t live nearby.”
When Vaughan-Spruce says she stood there because of the abortion center, the officer asks if she intended to form a type of protest, though she is holding no placard.
“No, I am not protesting,” Vaughan-Spruce replies.
“Are you praying?”
“I might be praying in my head,” she says.
“Erm, so I will ask you once more,” the officer says. “Will you voluntarily come with us now to the police station, for me to ask you some questions about today and other days when there are allegations you have broken the Public Spaces Protection Order?”
“If I have got a choice, then no,” Vaughan-Spruce replies.
The officer then arrested Vaughan-Spruce for allegedly failing to comply with the public space protection order, claiming it was “necessary” to “protect vulnerable people, namely service users” of the facility, which was actually closed at the time.
He directed his colleague, a female police officer, to search her to ensure she didn’t have any potentially harmful items. The video shows the officer running her gloved hands through Vaughan-Spruce’s hair, checking it and then patting down her body, including the lower region of her buttocks.
The officer removed a hair clip and handed it to a third officer alongside with tissues, keys and a mobile phone. The officers then took Vaughan-Spruce to a police station, locked her in a cell and interrogated before presenting her at court.
Authorities had enforced a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) on the area near the abortion facility since September 2022. This prevented “any act of approval or disapproval or attempted act of approval or disapproval” about abortion, including “verbal or written means, prayer or counseling.”
Birmingham Magistrates Court subsequently acquitted Vaughan-Spruce in February 2023 of the charge of “protesting and engaging in an act [prayer] that is intimidating to service users” due to lack of evidence.
The next month, six police officers arrested her again outside the abortion clinic. One of the officers reportedly said to her, “You’ve said you’re engaging in prayer, which is the offense.”
Bail conditions prohibited her from visiting areas near the abortion clinic buffer zones. These charges also were later dropped.
In a statement after she received the compensation, Vaughan-Spruce stated that “silent prayer is not a crime.”
“Nobody should be arrested merely for the thoughts they have in their heads – yet this happened to me twice at the hands of the West Midlands Police, who explicitly told me that ‘prayer is an offense,’” she said. “There is no place for Orwell’s ‘thought police’ in 21st century Britain, and thanks to legal support I received from ADF UK, I’m delighted that the settlement that I have received today acknowledges that.”
Despite this victory, Vaughan-Spruce said she was deeply concerned that violation of her rights could be repeated by other police.
“Our culture is shifting towards a clamp-down on viewpoint diversity, with Christian thought and prayer increasingly under threat of censorship,” she said. “A ‘buffer zone’ policy is set to be rolled out by the government imminently – the language of which is inherently unclear, and will likely lead to further violations against the freedom to pray, or peacefully converse or offer help near abortion facilities.”
Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, called the new Labour Government’s reported plans to make silent prayer a criminal offense a “crisis of free speech and thought in the U.K. today.” Igunnubole called the planned measures a brazen contradiction to the government’s commitment to international human rights law.
Labour plans to implement Public Order Act 2023 to stop any form of “influencing” within 150 meters of abortion facilities. ADF International in a press statement pointed out the ambiguity of the order, saying volunteers could be in breach of the law for talking, praying or simply giving out leaflets.
“Law enforcers are duty-bound to vigilantly protect, not prosecute, the peaceful exercise of fundamental rights,” Igunnubole said. “Yet across the country, Christians exercising their basic rights to peaceful expression have faced criminal charges for silently praying, or offering consensual conversations to, women in need.”
A law to introduce “buffer zones” in England and Wales was passed in 2023. Once in place, demonstrations within 150 meters of an abortion clinic would be prohibited. The expected implementation of the law during the spring was curtailed by the calling of a general election earlier this year. The new government has reportedly said it is committed to introducing buffer zones around clinics “as soon as possible.”
Meantime, officials have put in place temporary restrictions outside some clinics across the country the past few years.
The Vaughan-Spruce case mirrors two other buffer zone cases. Military veteran Adam Smith-Connor is facing a trial at Poole Magistrates’ Court after praying near an abortion facility in Bournemouth. Retired scientist Livia Tossici-Bolt faces the wrath of the law for holding a sign reading, “here to talk, if you want,” at the same location.
Two Conservative Party members of the House of Lords who voiced their alarm after the arrest of Vaughan-Spruce expressed their gladness at the compensation. Former cabinet minister Lord Frost called the police actions an “unjust arrest.”
“It is incredible that people have been arrested for thought-crime in modern Britain,” Frost said, warning that more arrests for silent prayers near abortion clinics could happen under the new Labour Government. “But if a recent report is correct that the government is considering formally criminalizing silent prayer outside abortion centers, then there will be further such cases, and then not just freedom of speech but freedom of thought will be under threat. It is hard to imagine a more absurd and dangerous situation.”
Frost said plans under the previous [Conservative] Home Secretary, including a consultation on the buffer zones issue before the recent British General Election, were more balanced and did not consider silent prayer to be an offense.
“It would be much better to stick to the sensible approach in the previous [Conservative] Home Secretary’s draft guidance, which proposed a much better balance between the various competing rights and interests,” Frost said. “If the government scraps it, then it will be clear to all that its commitment to civil liberties and fundamental freedoms is paper-thin.”
Farmer, former treasurer of the Conservative Party, called the arrest a “travesty of justice” and said the compensation was right for “the hardship she has endured.”
“But the wider issue remains that we are living through an undemocratic clampdown on Christian speech, expression and thought in the U.K. which is set to intensify when the government rolls out “buffer zones” nationwide,” he said. “If pro-life thought is considered prosecutable today, what other thought crimes might face similar measures tomorrow?”
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) highlighted the arrest of Vaughan-Spruce as an example of European governments “targeting individuals for their peaceful religious expression” in its 2024 annual report.
