Conviction of pro-life protester may impact US-UK trade deal
Last week’s conviction of a British citizen who peacefully protested outside an abortion center may damper a trade deal between the US and the UK.
On Friday, Judge Orla Austin found Livia Tossici-Bolt guilty of breaching a “safe zone” by holding a sign outside a Bournemouth abortion facility that read: “Here to talk if you want.” Abortion centers in the UK are fortified by 150-meter “buffer zones,” within which it is illegal to “intimidate”, “harass”, or “influence a person’s decision to access” the facility. Verbal praying, for example, is unlawful. Tossici-Bolt has been sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay £20,000 ($26,028) in legal costs.
The US State Department said last month it would be monitoring Tossici-Bolt’s case, citing concerns about the UK’s denial of free speech to British citizens. The Trump administration, which is being courted by the British Labour government for a trade deal, says the UK’s lack of free speech is a major area of concern. Vice President JD Vance scolded European leaders in February for targeting their political opponents and trampling the right to free speech.
“U.S.-UK relations share a mutual respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the State Department’s Democracy, Human Rights, & Labor Bureau said in a statement. “However, as Vice President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom . . . We are monitoring [Ms Tossici-Bolt’s] case.” According to the Daily Wire, State Department Senior Advisor Sam Samson met with Tossici-Bolt, though further details have not been revealed.
The Starmer administration has been caught off guard by Trump’s “no free trade without free speech” policy, according to European media.
“[UK officials] were surprised the U.S. cares about this,” one source said. “It’s a field of diplomacy that hasn’t been addressed.”
The UK’s assault on free speech
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, VP Vance rebuked the British government for its prosecution of Adam Smith-Connor, a British veteran who was arrested for silently praying in his mind near the same Bournemouth abortion center. Smith-Connor was quietly standing with his back to an abortion center in Bournemouth when he was approached by law enforcement officers who asked him what he was doing.
“Well, I’m praying,” Smith-Connor answered.
“Can I ask what is the nature of your prayer today?” the officer asked.
The 49-year-old responded that he was praying for his dead son, who was killed by an abortion Smith-Connor had arranged twenty years prior.
The officer said they had to follow orders and issued Smith-Connor a £100 ($127) fine for “the prayer that you’ve admitted to.” Smith-Conner was also criminally charged with breaching a public spaces protection order. He was later found guilty, sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to pay £9,000 ($11,597).
Other taxpayers have been arrested for mentally praying outside a closed abortion facility. The Crown Prosecution Service twice arrested Isabel Vaughan-Spruce for “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to [abortion] users” by thinking prayerful thoughts outside an abortion center.
But the UK’s laws against wrongthink also extend to gender ideology, where citizens are regulary arrested and jailed for criticizing transgenderism online.
