MUNICH (LifeSiteNews) —While delivering a major address in Germany today, U.S. Vice President JD Vance called out European leaders for not only attacking free speech but for targeting pro-lifers in particular.
During remarks at the Munich Security Conference Friday, Vance expressed dismay over the United Kingdom’s decision to arrest a man who was silently praying outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth on November 14, 2022.
“A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and 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,” Vance said.
“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 zone’s law which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility.”
US VP @JDVance calls out European anti-Christian censorship to their faces. pic.twitter.com/0fJabdUhfL
— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) February 14, 2025
As reported by LifeSiteNews’ Dorothy Cummings McLean, Smith-Connor was given a two-year probation sentence and ordered to pay £9,000 ($11,700) for having violated a controversial “buffer zone” law that prohibits persons from getting too close to abortion facilities in the U.K. Before going to trial in 2024, Smith-Connor publicly commented that his arrest is a symbol of a society in decline.
“Nobody should be prosecuted for silent prayer. It is unfathomable that in an apparently free society, I am being criminally charged on the basis of my silent thoughts, in the privacy of my own mind. It’s no different than being tried for a thoughtcrime,” he explained.
Smith-Connor is not the only Brit to be persecuted for silently praying outside an abortion clinic. Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, co-director of the March for Life UK and campaign director for 40 Days for Life Birmingham, caught the world’s attention on social media when she was arrested for praying silently near an abortion facility. She has repeatedly been fined, harassed, and wrongly arrested by police on multiple occasions since 2022.
“I’m literally just standing here silently saying some prayers,” she replied to a hostile policeman who confronted her earlier this month.
SHOCKING! UK Police HARASS peaceful pro-lifer | Silent prayer is NOT a crime pic.twitter.com/EQoz8uF2TE
— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) February 10, 2025
Following the implementation of local “buffer zones” around some abortion facilities on March 7, 2023, the U.K. Parliament expanded the legislation to cover every abortion facility in England and Wales in October last year as part of the Public Order Act 2023.
Scotland criminalizes prayer in your own home
In his speech today, Vance did not hold back in denouncing the U.K.’s laws.
“I wish I could say [the arrest of Adam Smith-Connor] was a fluke,” he said. “But no, this last October 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.”
“The backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs,” he also asserted. “In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”
Indeed, the Scottish government implemented so-called “Safe Access Zones” 200m (656ft) around abortion facilities in the country from September 24 last year, prohibiting behaviour considered likely to “influence someone’s private decision to use abortion services, prevent or get in the way of someone using abortion services [or] harass or distress someone trying to use abortion services.”
“Holding silent vigils” and “handing out leaflets” have been blacklisted as contravening the buffer zone law, including on private property. Praying silently inside one’s own home, therefore, could fall foul of the censorious law.
In fact, any act considered “done with the intention of (or reckless as to the whether it has the effect of): influencing someone’s decision to access, provide or facilitate the provision of abortion service, preventing or impeding someone from accessing, providing, or facilitating the provision of abortion services, or causing harassment, alarm or distress to someone relating to their decision to access, provide or facilitate the provision of abortion services, where in each case the other person is in the safe access zone” would be a violation of the law.
As Vance highlighted in his speech, those living within the 200m “access zones” were encouraged via a letter from the Scottish government to “report” neighbours they suspect may be “breaking the law by contacting Police Scotland,” which the vice president lambasted as “thoughtcrime.”
Penalties for breaking the ruling include fines of “up to £10,000 ($12,600) under summary procedure or to an unlimited amount under solemn procedure,” according to the Scottish government.
Michael Robinson, the Executive Director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) Scotland, told LifeSiteNews today that the “chilling” and “Orwellian” government measures are “driven purely by ideology”:
It is not about protecting women—it is about silencing opposition to abortion and restricting fundamental freedoms. It hands aggressive secularist zealots the tools to shut down legitimate, peaceful pro-life vigils and even control personal religious expression, including silent prayer. Most ordinary people—whatever their views on abortion—would rightly view the idea of police officers harassing someone for simply standing silently on a public pavement, or even outside their own home if they live within the so-called ‘buffer zone’, as heavy-handed and absurd. It is fraught with legal and practical difficulties. The notion that the State should police what someone is thinking or silently praying about is deeply sinister. It flies in the face of the fundamental liberties we hold dear.
Robinson also highlighted the serious legal concerns raised by the legislation: “This move appears to be wholly incompatible with Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which explicitly protects freedom of religion and belief, stating that everyone has the right to ‘manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance’, whether alone or with others, in public or in private. Criminalizing silent prayer strikes at the very heart of this freedom.”
Vance also drew attention to “out-of-control migration” in his remarks. He is currently in Europe meeting with world leaders. Earlier this week he spent time with French President Emmanuel Macron and also delivered a speech at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris.