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In yet another landmark in the current campaign against free speech, Livia Tossici-Bolt has been found guilty of two violations of a “buffer zone” outside a Bournemouth abortion centre. She was convicted of “breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order on two days in March 2023” — although she was not even speaking, merely standing silently within the zone holding a sign reading “here to talk, if you want.”

Despite this, the 64-year-old retired medical scientist “was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £20,000”.

The hefty financial penalty was surely meant to teach a very public lesson — to have a chilling effect on anyone who might feel tempted to offer help to possibly conflicted pregnant women. God forbid any woman should change her mind and actually go through with her pregnancy instead of terminating it as a result of being offered real choice instead of the faux “right to choose”.

With an estimated 300,000 abortions in the United Kingdom in 2024, approximately 10,372,100 unborn lives have been lost since legalisation in 1967.  Ten years ago, one in five viable pregnancies was aborted; by 2020, the figure had risen to one in four; by 2023, it was three in ten. Apparently, however, this country needs even more dead babies.

False Accusations

Clare McCullough of the Good Counsel organisation, which is providing legal help for Tossici-Bolt, said that pro-lifers had been “accused” of things like “calling women murderers and chasing them down the road”, something she said they “never do”. The fact that we already have laws against such behaviour suggests even more strongly that these new zones are intended to criminalise thoughts, feelings and opinions, publicly expressed or not.

The UK news media, including the BBC, ignore the help given to needy pregnant mothers by pro-life vigils, and with absolutely no evidence that pro-life individuals harass anyone outside abortion centres, they are forced to illustrate their “harassment” stories with pictures of peaceful elderly “protesters” and unmolested abortion premises, clearly unaware of the inherent irony of silent individuals accused of harassment being harassed by squads of policemen inquiring into their private thoughts.

Ms McCullough insisted that Tossici-Bolt had “not broken the buffer zone, because the buffer zone is all about doing things to persuade or dissuade women about abortion, and her sign doesn’t say anything about that. It’s the perceptions of people who disagree with her on abortion that have caused them to prosecute her because of who she is, and the fact that she’s a known pro-lifer.”

She added that “anyone going into that abortion centre would have seen a sign saying, ‘here to talk if you want’ — it didn’t say pro-life, it didn’t say keep your baby, it didn’t say abortion ends a baby’s life — it said nothing like that.” Consequently, she didn’t ‘“see how the judge has come to this conclusion, except by deciding that because of who Livia is, they’re going to convict her.”

District Judge Orla Austin told the court that Tossici-Bolt “lacks insight that her presence could have a detrimental effect on the women attending the clinic, their associates, staff and members of the public.” Of course, if we believe that abortion represents a negative approach to pregnancy, it could be argued that her presence might have a positive effect; however, the Judge added: “I accept her beliefs were truly held beliefs. Although it’s accepted this defendant held pro-life views, it’s important to note this case is not about the rights and wrongs about abortion, but about whether the defendant was in breach of the PSPO (Public Spaces Protection Order).”

Given the harsh sentence imposed in this case, her claim that it was “not about the rights and wrongs about abortion” defies belief. However, perhaps the English approach is considered enlightened, given that in Scotland, any expression about abortion deemed to be insufficiently admiring, made in private dwellings but glimpsed or overheard from outside, is now a criminal offence.

State Overreach

Another pro-lifer, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who “was awarded more than £10,000 in a court settlement after the police ‘continued to falsely arrest her’ for silently praying”, said of her own experience: “It started right back in 2022, I was arrested in an abortion centre buffer zone in Birmingham for simply silently praying in my head. I was completely acquitted in court, and yet two or three weeks later, I was rearrested for exactly the same thing, for silently praying.

“I finally thought that was the end of it. But since then, week after week, the police have been coming out, telling me that it isn’t my prayers that are now the issue, but just who I am. That knowing who I am means that I’m causing someone else harassment.” She says that “harassment is rightly banned across the UK anywhere”, but “if just knowing who I am is causing people harassment, then there’s simply nowhere left for me to go in public — am I to stay at home? Is it harassment for people I live with? That’s how ludicrous it’s becoming.”

This is not justice but injustice — not so much prosecution as persecution.

In a statement outside court, Tossici-Bolt said her conviction was a “dark day for freedom” in the UK. All those who care about democracy must, one would hope, agree that this legal judgement represents a massive blow to the free expression upon which the democratic system depends. As G. K. Chesterton remarked, some things are so big we cannot see them, although it seems they can be seen by those in distant lands, across vast oceans — in America and Australia, where people still care about this nation’s historic role in defending the right to freedom of expression.

In contrast, it seems the British governing classes are now determined to censor the faintest indication that abortion might be anything other than a life-affirming healthcare treatment for women, by criminalising the holding of signs offering help to vulnerable pregnant mothers – some of whom, as we know, are coerced into seeking abortion.

They are even silencing silent prayer, and if negative views of abortion are distressing to women who are contemplating that course, then logically speaking, these censorship zones should be extended over the whole country, in private as well as in public spaces. In their campaign to prosecute people for being pro-life, perhaps, in the prevailing Orwellian dystopia, they will introduce “facecrime” laws to deal with anyone indicating negative views of abortion via their facial expressions.

Abortion advocates speak loftily about preventing harassment, but if they are indeed serious about this, they should prosecute themselves for harassing the only ones who are offering women positive help. They speak of providing protection, but who will protect us against their assaults on free speech?

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The above article is an expanded version of this letter. Image courtesy of Adobe.