UK Man Arrested for Silently Praying
A U.K. man criminally charged after praying outside of an abortion clinic is speaking up about his case, sharing the details of what unfolded with CBN’s Faithwire. Adam Smith-Connor said he was outside the clinic last November for just two or three minutes before community police support officers approached him and started asking questions.
“[They] asked me what I was doing and I said I was praying for my deceased son,” Smith-Connor explained. “The female officer asked me, ‘What is the nature of your prayer?’ I was a bit taken aback by that and I said I was praying for my deceased son.” He said he neither approached nor spoke to anyone and that he didn’t impede any individual’s privacy. He also said he stands against any harassment of women outside of clinics.
But he said the officers told him he was breaching the Public Space Protection Orders (PSPO) order — a buffer zone precluding protests and apparently internal prayers outside abortion clinics. The “silent prayer in his mind” was purportedly seen as a protest against abortion and he was told to leave and fined.
Lois McLatchie Miller, spokesperson for ADF UK, the legal firm handling Smith-Connor’s case, said people hearing his case might think they’re “listening to an extract from an Orwellian novel like ‘1984.’” “But … this is real. It’s in 2023 and police did come over to check Adam’s thinking and even ended up prosecuting,” she said, going on to explain how the PSPO orders work.
As for Smith-Connor, he warned others about the dangers of prosecuting people for thought crimes. “It’s just outrageous,” he said. “It is un-British, frankly. “It’s just wrong.” Hear him tell his story; he heads back to court in November.
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