Just days after Vice President JD Vance warned Europe against imposing Orwellian laws criminalizing free speech and silent prayer, police in Scotland arrested a 74-year-old grandmother for silently offering to speak to women outside an abortion facility, if they wished.
Rose Docherty stood outside the abortion wing of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow holding a sign that read, “Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” Two police officers insisted she desist, handcuffed the elderly woman, and charged her with violating the abortion facility’s “buffer zone” barring free speech within a wide radius of any abortion facility.
The pensioner’s arrest last week is the first made under Scotland’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act. Those convicted face a fine of 10,000 pounds (approximately $12,600 U.S.) or an unlimited financial penalty if their expression is deemed serious.
The member of Scottish Parliament who wrote her own nation’s law, Gillian Mackay of the far-left Scottish Greens, denounced any and all peaceful pro-life advocacy outside abortion facilities as “utterly shameful and I am grateful to Police Scotland for acting so quickly.”
“This kind of intimidation has no place in a modern or progressive Scotland,” said Mackay.
But one of the victims of such free speech suppression laws, Isabel Vaughn-Spruce, has called the arrests “utterly disgraceful! After being told that JD Vance had got it wrong we’re hit with this—an elderly lady can’t offer to talk with people who want to talk with her without getting arrested! We are an international embarrassment right now!” Authorities twice convicted her of violating a similar British law, but in the end the government paid her a 13,000-pound (about $16,800) settlement last August for violating her human rights.
The “shocking scenes … prove JD Vance’s speech last week to be correct, when he warned that free speech across Europe ‘is in retreat,’” said Daniel Frampton, editorial officer at the U.K.-based Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. “Vice-President Vance cited the specific case of Adam Smith-Connor who was arrested for praying silently for his dead son near an abortion facility in England.”
The targeted action came just days after Vance told a meeting of European diplomats the greatest threat facing the West is “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values,” including freedom of speech. The vice president specifically singled out the prosecution of peaceful pro-life advocates.
Docherty’s arrest mirrors an English city’s charges last year’s against Livia Tossici-Bolt, 63, who held a sign outside an abortion facility in Bournemouth, England. Her sign read, “Here to talk, if you want.”
“Am I committing an offense?” she asked when police approached.
“Yes, I believe you are conducting a silent vigil,” they replied. They charged her with a Fixed Penalty Notice, and the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council set her trial date for March 6.
“For several years now, I have been offering a helping hand to women who would like to consider other options to abortion, and pointing them to options where they can receive financial and practical support, if that’s what they would like,” said Tossici-Bolt. “There’s nothing wrong with offering help. There’s nothing wrong with two adults engaging in a consensual conversation on the street. I shouldn’t be treated like a criminal just for this.”
Vance agreed, noting the case of Adam Smith-Connor, physiotherapist and Army veteran in his 50s, charged “with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.”
Police charged Smith-Connor, who was praying for his own aborted son, with violating the Public Spaces Protection Order, which forbids any action that could imply disapproval of abortion within 150 meters (almost 500 feet) of an abortion facility. Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court slapped Smith-Connor with a fine of 9,000 pounds ($11,330). The Bournemouth Crown Court has scheduled his appeal for this July.
Vance renewed his objections at the Conservative Political Action Conference late last week.
“Friendship is based on shared values. You do not have shared values if you’re jailing people for saying, ‘We should close down our border.’ You don’t have shared values if you cancel elections because you don’t like the result, and that happened in Romania. You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up. So, let’s have shared values. Let’s defend democracy. Let’s have free expression, not just in the United States, but all over the Western world. That is the path to strong alliances in Europe,” said Vance. “You’ve got to give the populations of the world the opportunity to speak up and say, ‘We want to be able to speak our own mind in our own country.’”
“The Biden administration did more to destroy free speech, not just in the United States, but also in Europe, than any administration in American history,” Vance continued. “I’m not even blaming the Europeans. I’m actually saying: You followed the lead of Joe Biden into censorship and mass migration. Follow the lead of Donald J. Trump, and that’s free speech, borders, and sovereignty. That is the future for our shared civilization.”
One of President Donald Trump’s first actions in office was fulfilling his promise, made at Family Research Center’s 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit, to pardon 23 peaceful pro-life advocates arrested and prosecuted by the Biden-Harris administration for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has since reintroduced the FACE Act Repeal Act (HR 5577), which would eliminate those penalties for good.
At CPAC, Vance also reiterated his pro-life stance. “I’m very pro-life, I’m a devout Christian,” he said. “Now, we’ve got the power of persuasion. We’ve got to persuade our fellow citizens that unborn life is worthy of protecting. It is sacred in the eyes of God, and it should be sacred in the eyes of man, too. And we have to pick up the torch and fight for that every single day.”
Pro-life advocates in the British Isles are thankful for America’s change in leadership.
“Free speech and the right to religious expression are under constant attack across the U.K., and the targeting of pro-life Christians by the state is also on the rise,” said Frampton. “Thankfully, people on both sides of the Atlantic are beginning to wake up to the illiberalism and censorious instincts of politicians like Mackay.”
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
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