Police in the United Kingdom have declined to press charges against a woman arrested twice for silently praying outside an abortion facility. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was taken into custody and subjected to a six-month investigation for allegedly violating a “buffer zone” outside the clinic in Birmingham, England—but now police have dropped charges and issued an apology.

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The first confrontation between Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the director of the UK March for Life, and West Midlands police was captured on video in December 2022. Vaughan-Spruce was seen standing silently several yards away from the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham. Though she was not engaging in any kind of demonstration—or even speaking to anyone, for that matter—authorities determined that she was in violation of a “Public Spaces Protection Order.” These orders by local authorities ban activities like prayer, counseling, or protest against abortion through “graphic, verbal, or written means” within a certain radius of the facility.

“Are you standing here as part of a protest?” an officer asked.

“No, I’m not protesting,” Vaughan-Spruce said.

“Are you praying?” the police officer inquired.

“I might be praying in my head,” she replied.

Following this exchange, she was escorted away by police and was later charged with four counts of failing to comply with a Public Space Protection Order.

A second encounter outside the same clinic in March 2023 played out similarly.

Following a lengthy investigation by authorities, West Midlands police told Vaughan-Spruce and her legal defense from the Alliance Defending Freedom that all charges had been dropped. They also issued an apology  “for the time this case has taken to come to this position,” according to the Daily Mail.

Responding to the dropped charges, Vaughan-Spruce issued the following statement:

This isn’t 1984, but 2023 – I should never have been arrested or investigated simply for the thoughts I held in my own mind. Silent prayer is never criminal. I welcome West Midland Police’s decision to end their investigation and their apology for the time it took to do so, but it’s important to highlight the extremely harmful implications of this ordeal not just for myself, but for everyone concerned with fundamental freedoms in the UK. What happened to me signals to others that they too could face arrest, interrogation, investigation, and potential prosecution if caught exercising their basic freedom of thought.

Now that authorities have twice settled on the conclusion that silent prayer is not a crime – a conclusion also reached by the Home Secretary last week – I am thankful to resume my practice of praying silently for women in crisis pregnancies.

Parliamentary legislation to extend the buffer zone around abortion clinics to 150 meters is currently pending after the defeat of an amendment that would have exempted silent prayer from the restrictions.

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