But why did it take the American VP to draw attention to the persecution of pro-life people?
In a remarkable turn of events, Adam Smith-Connor, an army veteran and physiotherapist based in the New Forest, who was fined £9,000 in November 2022 for praying outside a local abortion clinic, was publicly defended by, arguably, the second most powerful man in the world.
Adam’s “heinous” crime was breaching a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) introduced by the local council a month earlier, which prohibits any act of “engaging in an act of approval/disapproval … to abortion services, by any means,” including “prayer.” The zone, introduced outside the Orphir Road Clinic, spans the size of 15 football pitches and ensures that anyone who objects to the intentional killing of babies (771 in 2021) is kept far, far away.
It was, therefore, a real turn of events that this relatively untold story in the mainstream media was taken up by the Vice President of the USA, JD Vance, who deliberately cited Adam’s case during a speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.
Having addressed social media censorship in European elections and a Swedish murder following a Quran burning, he had this to say:
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.
He went on to outline Adam’s “crime” in careful detail before stating:
I wish I could say this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But know this: last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish Government started 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.
In total, 15 per cent of his speech was dedicated to these homegrown censorship examples, which he claimed amounted to “free speech in retreat.”
Forced to respond to such high-profile criticism, the BBC invited a spokesperson from BPAS, the company that runs the Orphir Road clinic, onto their Saturday morning show. The drama escalated when three minutes later, she had not managed a grammatically correct sentence, let alone a defense of women’s reproductive rights.
The spokesperson in question, Rachel Clarke, later wrote on X that she was diabetic and had been experiencing a hypoglycemic low at the time of the interview but had since recovered. She apologised, saying she “wasn’t able to represent our values the way I usually would.” Despite clearly being sympathetic to her plight, many I spoke to since simply said regardless, “God shut her mouth!”
The matter is strangely personal. On another Saturday morning in August 2019, I too was interviewed on BBC Radio 4 following my own arrest for praying audibly outside another, larger abortion clinic — this one in Ealing, West London. That same clinic was responsible for the deaths of 8,729 babies in 2021, 225 of whom were between 20 and 23 weeks gestation. Yet, I was shown no compassion by anchor Justin Webb as I sought to defend fundamental rights. Instead, I was grilled for five minutes, given a soggy croissant, and sent packing.
Since then, the localised PSPOs have been replaced with a poorly drafted national law using the Public Order Act 2023. Section 9 of the act, labeled “Safe Access Zones,” places a 150 meter zone around “every clinic and hospital providing abortion services across England and Wales”. A similar law was introduced in Scotland. By my calculations, this amounts to around 25 km² of public land where the European Convention on Human Rights (particularly Articles 9, 10, and 11) is effectively suspended — yet it feels as though no one is talking about it.
All of this would have been grounds for an article in its own right, but the story resurfaced in a now-scandalous light last week when a 74-year-old woman — whose name has not yet been released — was arrested outside Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Glasgow, for breaking this new law. Her crime? Holding a sign saying “coercion is a crime. Here to talk only if you want”.
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the trust overseeing the hospital, has seen abortion figures nearly double since 2014 — suggesting more activism is needed, not less. Yet in its coverage of the arrest, the BBC ignored this fact, instead using the opportunity to segue back to JD Vance’s comments, claiming he was engaging in fake news.
A particular point of contention was his claim that people living within these “safe access zones” in Scotland had received letters from the Scottish Government warning them they could be prosecuted for praying inside their own homes.
First Minister of Scotland, John Swinney, dismissed this as “just wrong,” while Scottish Green MSP Gillian Mackay, an architect of these zones accused Vance of “spreading misinformation”. You have to destroy the evidence before you gaslight people. Unfortunately for Mackay, they haven’t. The very letter in question is very much alive and kicking, popping up with gleeful abandon on Mackay’s feed every time she denies its existence.
For Mackay, praying outside abortion clinics is “intimidation” and “has no place in Scotland.” Yet, it appears that it is the Scottish Government that has been engaging in censorship, intimidation and now deception — and they’ve been caught red-handed.
This beautiful alignment of superpowers, a suffering physio and slanderous Scots has wider implications for all of us. The Scottish Government may have been caught with their pants down but the rest of us have been found lacking belts. After all, why did it require the intervention of an American Vice President for us to start talking about this?
David Brennan, host of the About Abortion Podcast — once described as “one of the most forceful voices on the subject in the UK church” — recently discussed the media’s role with YouTuber Jamie Bambrick. Quoting from C.S. Lewis’s oft-overlooked classic The Hideous Strength, he said:
“It’s not just the conclusions that the media or some individuals might push, but the very framing of the issues. It’s the idea that there could be a neutral stance, or even that an issue is two-sided. Some issues do have two sides. But some simply don’t. I mean, what’s the other reasonable side to ‘it’s wrong to kill innocent babies’?”
And yet, very few publications — even among the free speech and Christian variety — are willing to concede this point. Like Sauron deception of Lord Calibrimbor, we beaver away on the premise that some kind of “safe access zones” may be necessary to “stop harassment” all the while conceding fundamental rights and worst still concealing the atrocities that are going on inside the buildings in the centre of these zones.
Why did it take the U.S. Vice President to expose just how bad things have become?
Even great organisations like the Free Speech Union, in my interactions with them, have seen this issue as partisan. They are not alone in this position. But if all world faiths pray, how can it be partisan? Moreover, how can the intentional killing of 10 million babies — fetus, embryo, or whatever term you prefer — since 1967 be reduced to a matter of personal opinion? Regardless of your noun of choice, they are human. And humanity is not partisan.
While remaining non-political, Adam’s X following has jumped from around 300 to over 4,600 in just a week — a platform he is determined to use to further raise awareness of these zones. His quest is an essential one.
Like Adam, I welcome JD Vance’s intervention. His remarks were far more accurate than the nonsense coming from the Scottish Government or the BBC. But still, I have to ask: Why did it take the U.S. Vice President to expose just how bad things have become?
