Put a smile on your dial. Or else.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who was arrested for praying near a British abortion clinic/Alliance Defending Freedom UK

(Mercator) On October 31, 2024, it became illegal to protest against abortion, hand out leaflets, or even silently pray within 150 metres of any abortion facility in England and Wales, on pain of an unlimited fine.

Coming into force on Halloween, this creepy new law was a treat for the abortion industry, which can anticipate a hefty rise in income, but a trick on everyone else; for although harassment is already illegal and there is no evidence of it being committed by pro-lifers, the British public has been tricked into thinking otherwise.

We have come a long way from the Nuremberg Trials, when abortion was regarded as a crime against humanity, and the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrined the right to life from conception.

Left-liberal politicians once extolled human rights; now they ban free speech. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law via the 1998 Human Rights Act, thus protecting our right to freedom of expression. This right, according to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, includes “freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers”.

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Without the right to be born – something that over 10 million humans killed in the UK since 1967 will never enjoy – all other human rights are superfluous.

Tweet This: Without the right to be born–something 10 million+ humans killed in the UK since 1967 will never have–all other human rights are superfluous

Abortion is the leading cause of death worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, there are 73 million abortions every year. But in 2021, the latest year for which we have comprehensive figures, the top 10 causes of death accounted for only 39 million deaths. Silencing that truth is the worst form of censorship.

And it will lead to deep social unrest. While the UN demands that member states decriminalise abortion, the apparent solution to declining Western birth rates is not curbing abortion but allowing mass migration.

Furthermore, abortion is protected while the public is menaced by real crime, and highly disruptive environmental and “just stop Israel” protests are treated with kid gloves.

When six policemen were sent to arrest pro-lifer Isabel Vaughan-Spruce for silently praying, commentator Nick Ferrari, one of few to express shock, noted the double standards involved: “[H]ow come we live in a country where you can get arrested for praying, but police offer to get you a blanket if you close down a motorway or lie in front of an ambulance?” 


Good question. The liberal left’s woke views now predominate in Britain, and they no longer call for free speech but for curbs on it – all in the name of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. For them, 1984 is not a warning but a how-to guide.

UK political commentator Matt Goodwin says this is a classic example of government by “the Luxury Belief Class”, who “prioritise clamping down on vague and abstract notions of ‘hate’ while simultaneously failing to deliver core public services that keep people safe.” He describes numbers of non-crime hate reports as “mind-boggling”, and although these are officially recorded, the accused will “never know…because police are under no obligation to notify them”. Significantly, “no evidence is required”. Just like prayer in the the buffer zones.

This left-liberal minority sees itself as speaking for the more numerous but less powerful and prosperous minorities, but the solutions they propose conveniently coincide with their own vested interests. They fail to ask whether poor women might prefer the practical help offered by pro-life vigils, merely sympathising in a solipsistic way, along the lines of “If I were you, I wouldn’t want a child”.

Poor women and minority women, without the luxury of luxury beliefs, get the majority of abortions but this keeps the clinics open for those who feel they might need one at some point, even if they never avail themselves of this uncaring “healthcare”. As the advertisers would say, “They have abortions so you don’t have to”.

Goodwin recalls that a few years ago, a former policeman, Harry Miller, took the College of Policing to court after he was warned that “a transgender lyric he had tweeted was step one of five towards genocide” and required “necessary intervention”. Thankfully he won the case. The judge noted:

“The effect of the police turning up at [the claimant’s] place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated. To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”

Goodwin comments that just “as actual levels of racism and prejudice are falling rapidly across Western societies, the rise of these ‘non-crime hate incidents’ is fuelling a creeping and deeply oppressive climate in which everybody is encouraged to spy on everybody else … we are urged to be instinctively suspicious of, if not turn against, one another.”

We have been here before, remember? There are priest-holes across the country to prove it. During the Reformation, the penalty for being Catholic – being hanged, drawn and quartered – was a more definitive way of being cancelled. And neighbours were paid to spy upon neighbours. It all has a very contemporary ring.

Admittedly, it made the news when a prominent journalist was doorstepped by the police and interrogated about an anonymous non-crime hate speech report. But don’t think that it will stop. Progressives never change their minds, they just change the subject. Lesser-known individuals will continue to quietly suffer harassment in those “abortion protection zones”.

What comes next, now that the government has banned silent prayer as a thoughtcrime? Will we be forced to cheer when the word “abortion” is mentioned? Could Orwell’s nightmare come true?

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. … to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: FACECRIME, it was called.”

Oh well, it might be a good way to ensure that everybody in Britain is smiling, 24/7, indoors and out.

 Editor's note: Ann Farmer writes from the United Kingdom. This article was published by Mercator and is reprinted with permission.

 

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