British police dropped charges against Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who was arrested twice for silently praying outside abortion clinics.
Rather than choosing to drop the charges, the police let the case expire.
UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote in an open letter that “silent prayer, within itself, is not unlawful” and “holding lawful opinions, even if those opinions may offend others, is not a criminal offense.”
“This isn’t 1984, but 2023 – I should never have been arrested or investigated simply for the thoughts I held in my own mind,” Vaughan-Spruce said.
“Silent prayer is never criminal. I welcome West Midland Police’s decision to end their investigation and their apology for the time it took to do so, but it’s important to highlight the extremely harmful implications of this ordeal not just for myself, but for everyone concerned with fundamental freedoms in the UK. What happened to me signals to others that they too could face arrest, interrogation, investigation, and potential prosecution if caught exercising their basic freedom of thought.”
Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in December 2022 for silently praying in an abortion buffer zone, an area designed to limit how close an anti-abortion demonstrator may be.
Vaughan-Spruce was arrested again in March for praying silently.
Reporting from Not the Bee:
Basically, the police just let the case expire. There's no admitting that they were wrong to press charges. No punishment for the officers arresting someone for thinking. It was just that they didn't want to go to too much trouble.
