Conservative MP’s have called the arrest of an anti-abortion campaigner “Orwellian.”
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of March for Life, was arrested on Monday for breaching a public space protection order (PSPO), a buffer zone put in place to protect women attending the clinic from harassment.
The 45-year-old told police she was “just here to pray” and refused to move away from the entrance to the Birmingham clinic.
According to The Times:
West Midlands police said: “The woman was advised to leave the area and refused, before being issued with a fixed penalty notice. When she refused to leave again, she was arrested. She has now been bailed while statements are taken from residents and people working in the area.”
Vaughan-Spruce was arrested outside the same clinic in December for violating the PSPO, but charges were dropped.
The case has prompted concern from senior Conservative MPs, who tabled an amendment to allow “silent prayer” to be permitted outside abortion clinics, which was rejected in the House of Commons on Tuesday. The amendment had been tabled to a bill mandating 150m “buffer zones” around clinics in England to prevent the harassment of women as they access medical care.
The law, which was passed by 299 votes to 116, makes it illegal for anyone within the buffer zone to “influence any person’s decision to access, provide or facilitate” abortion services, or cause “harassment or distress”.
Moving the amendment, Andrew Lewer, a Conservative, told MPs: “This section of the Public Order Bill is leading us into the territory of thought crimes and creates unprecedented interference with the rights to freedom of speech and thought in the UK.”
Sir Desmond Swayne, a Conservative former minister, described the legislation potentially criminalising silent prayer as “Orwellian territory or thought crime”.
Proponents of the buffer zone legislation pointed out that no restrictions were being placed on prayer or freedom of thought but simply on “the location that you do it”.
Stella Creasy, the Labour MP, said that protesters praying inside the new buffer zones were there “to intimidate or destabilise a very difficult decision”.
