Vice President JD Vance railed against woke European laws that penalize the expression of free speech and whose targets always seem to be conservatives and Christians. Vance’s remarks came after the United Kingdom arrested yet another man praying outside of an abortion clinic was arrested and charged under Orwellian laws for such an act.
For context, Vance was speaking about a 51-year-old British man named Adam Smith Connor, who stood outside an abortion clinic and prayed silently for around just three minutes. He was not molesting anyone, interacting with anyone, nor obstructing anyone’s entrance or exit into the facility. Still, he was found to be in violation of new, draconian laws demanding a buffer zone between ‘protesters’ and abortion centers.
The Christian Tribune likewise reported on another UK man, a retired Northern Ireland pastor who was similarly arrested. Clive Johnston was accused of staging a protest that violated the nation’s Abortion Services Safe Access Zones Act. His crime was standing on the other side of a divided highway and leading a small group of people in prayer. In Johnston’s case, much like that of Connor’s, there were no explicit references to abortion and no overt protests; just a community of Christians in prayer.
In this context, then, Donald Trump’s Catholic running mate and Vice President took European laws to task over the elimination of specific speech and assembly. “Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular, in the crosshairs,” his remarks began.
Vance then shared the story of the aforementioned Connor. “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Connor, a 51 year old physiotherapist and an Army veteran 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. After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for. Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.”
“Now the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new buffer zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay 1000s of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”
“I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person, but no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish Government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.
“Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” the remarks finish. Watch Vance explain the horrific abuse of freedoms on the other side of the Atlantic below:
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video