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Adam Smith-ConnorADF UK

(LifeSiteNews) — A British army veteran has been found guilty of breaching a pro-abortion “buffer zone” by praying silently near the protected abortuary.

This morning, Adam Smith-Connor, 51, was given a two-year conditional discharge (i.e. he is on probation for two years) and ordered to pay costs of £9,000 ($11,700) by District Judge Orla Austin at the Poole Magistrates’ Court in Poole, Dorset.

Smith-Connor was arrested near the British Pregnancy Advisory’s Bournemouth, Dorset, abortion business on November 14, 2022, after praying silently for his son Jacob, who was aborted 22 years ago. The father, currently a physiotherapist, pleaded not guilty to breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) that forbids protests, offers of help to pregnant women, or pro-life witness of any kind outside the abortion center for the next three years, from Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. When confronting Smith-Connor, who prayed silently with his back toward the clinic, a police officer asked him to describe “the nature of his prayer.”

Austin decided that Smith-Connor had deliberately violated the Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). According to the Irish News, she had been told that Smith-Connor had emailed the local government to inform them of his plans to pray silently outside the clinic. The court had also heard that he refused to leave when asked to do so by police officers, who engaged him in conversation for well over an hour.

Smith-Connor had prayed for his son’s soul outside the abortuary on other occasions.

READ: British Army veteran charged for praying silently outside abortion facility

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is another British citizen who has been arrested for silent prayer, but she received £13,000 ($16,900) in damages and an apology from police. She told LifeSiteNews via email today that she is “immensely concerned” that Smith-Connor has been “branded … a criminal” for praying in a public place for his aborted son.

“Adam was given assurances by the police that he was perfectly entitled to silently pray near the abortion centre in Bournemouth, as of course he should be able to do – yet just one week later he was issued with a fine for doing exactly that,” Vaughan-Spruce stated.

“In Adam’s three day long gruelling trial in September he provided video evidence of his interaction with the police in which they assured him repeatedly his silent prayers were not breaching the PSPO buffer zone in Bournemouth and this, along with the knowledge that we should never be criminalized for our thoughts, should have been conclusive evidence to acquit Adam of any wrongdoing,” she continued.

READ: UK pro-life woman awarded £13k after wrongful arrests for silently praying outside abortion facility

Vaughan-Spruce believes that if silent prayer has become a crime, Britain has “moved into the realm of thought policing. It would be discrimination against people with religious beliefs.”

“This should be a concern to each and every person of goodwill regardless of their faith or even which side of the abortion debate they stand on,” she declared.

Vaughan-Spruce encourages all those involved in implementing buffer zones to think carefully about what they’re doing and the kind of society which they’re helping to create.

“Christians must never be told they can’t pray in public, that prayer is something to be left at home or reserved solely for church,” she declared. “Wherever the public are allowed, Christians, as members of the public, must also be allowed, and wherever Christians are allowed, their silent prayers, their private thoughts, must be allowed too.”

“Praying for pregnant women and their children isn’t a crime. Ultimately prayer can only bring good, never evil, and is not something to be feared nor should it ever be outlawed, Vaughan-Spruce concluded.

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