Silent prayer around abortion clinics in England and Wales is not an offence under the Public Order Act 2023, the Home Office said on Monday.
In a draft guidance on enforcing the new buffer zone law, the Home Office said prayers shouldn’t be automatically considered unlawful, and that silent prayer isn’t unlawful “under any circumstances” unless the person’s “conduct is also intrusive.”
Lois McLatchie Miller, senior communications officer at ADF UK, the UK branch of an international Christian legal advocacy organization, said the government consultation “offers an opportunity for the public to appeal to the government to protect basic freedoms.”
The Public Order Act 2023 bans people from acting within an SAZ “with the intent of, or reckless as to whether it has the effect of” influencing any person’s decision to access, provide, or facilitate abortion at the clinic; obstructing or impeding their access, provision, or facilitation of abortion; or causing harassment, alarm, or distress to anyone connected to a decision to access, provide, or facilitate abortion.
The Home Office said it would expect “influence,” which is not defined in the act, “to require more than mere mention of abortion or the provision of information.”
“As such, informing, discussing, or offering help does not necessarily amount to ‘influence,’” the guidance reads.
The guidance also warned against taking actions against “incidental activities,” such as passing through an SAZ while pushing a pram or parking a car that happens to have a pro-life sticker on it within the zone.
ADF UK previously said that in one of the cases it has been supporting, Sean Gough, a Catholic priest who was charged after holding a “praying for free speech” sign near a locally-imposed abortion clinic buffer zone, was also charged for parking his car in the zone because it had a bumper sticker reading “unborn lives matter.”
The Home Office said officers “must not arrest suspects” unless they have “an objective factual basis” to believe an offence has been “intentionally or recklessly committed.”
Regarding the threshold of harassment, alarm, or distress, the guidance said officers should consider the ordinary meanings of the terms along with case law related to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, while also considering individual circumstances.
It also added that it’s normally not in the public interest to take action unless officers “reasonably believe that the acts/behaviour in question would have a direct link to any person’s decision to access abortion services, or would obstruct or impede such access.”
“Nor would it generally be in the public interest for officers to pursue criminal proceedings where there is no evidence that anyone was in fact influenced, obstructed, harassed, alarmed or distressed,” the guidance reads.
The Home Office also said the police “should not take action in cases where engagement between protestors and those accessing, providing or facilitating the provision of abortion services is consensual,” adding that police and prosecutors should be careful “not to assume that a service user does not wish to exercise her personal autonomy to engage with bystanders with alternative viewpoints or to receive charitable support.”
In the foreword of the draft, Home Secretary James Cleverly said the guidance is underpinned by the “key principles” that it’s “unacceptable for anyone to be harassed or distressed simply for exercising their legal right to access abortion services,” and “the rights to gather, to express views, and to manifest religious beliefs are a cornerstone of democracy in Britain.”
He also said the guidance is non-statutory because “the appropriate balance between competing interests will not always be straightforward.”
In a statement to The Epoch Times, Mrs. McLatchie Miller wrote, “Unfortunately, we’ve seen that the ‘buffer zones’ enforced already in five local councils have gone much further than banning only harassment (which is already illegal under existing legislation),” referring to zones set up by local councils before the Public Order Act 2023 was enacted in Manchester, Birmingham, Bournemouth, and London’s Ealing and Richmond.
The campaigner said “hundreds of women have testified to having welcomed the help services offered to them by pro-life volunteers at their moment in need,” with many making “an empowered choice to continue their pregnancies after hearing about the financial, practical and emotional support available to them.”
Citing the charges against a number of people who prayed in the PSPO buffer zones, Mrs. McLatchie Miller said it “isn’t for the government to police what opinion one holds about abortion in their head, nor the prayers they think privately in their mind.”
“The consultation offers an opportunity for the public to appeal to the government to protect basic freedoms—freedoms to hold consensual conversations, freedom to offer help, and freedom to hold one’s own private thoughts in their own mind without interference,” she said, urging the public to respond.
