By Kate Anderson
Daily Caller News Foundation
A Christian charity worker arrested for praying outside an abortion clinic received a not-guilty verdict in court Thursday.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested in December after an officer accused her of praying outside of an abortion clinic, which is against the law in the United Kingdom. The Birmingham Magistrates’ Court ruled that Vaughan-Spruce was not guilty and acquitted her of all charges, according to Alliance Defending Freedom U.K.’s press release.
Vaughan-Spruce said she was pleased with the verdict but that she “should never have been arrested for my thoughts” for “praying on a public street,” according to the press release.
Vaughan-Spruce had been accused of violating England’s Public Protection Order (PPO), which prohibits any type of demonstration or “antisocial behavior” near abortion clinics. In February, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped all the charges against Vaughan-Spruce, but ADF UK announced that they would be pursuing an official verdict in court to prevent CPS from reopening the investigation in the future.
WND is now on Trump’s Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
Similarly, the same court ruled that Father Sean Gough, who had also been charged with violating PPO zones due to praying outside of the same abortion clinic, was not guilty, according to the press release.
“I stand by my beliefs – unborn lives do matter,” Gough said. “But whatever your views are on abortion, we can all agree that a democratic country cannot be in the business of prosecuting thought crimes.”
Vaughan-Spruce also condemned the U.K.’s attempts to censor speech in Thursday’s press release.
“When it comes to censorship zones, peaceful prayer and attempts to offer help to women in crisis pregnancies are now being described as either ‘criminal” or “anti-social,’” she said. “But what is profoundly anti-social are the steps now being taken to censor freedom of speech, freedom to offer help, freedom to pray and even freedom to think. We must stand firm against this and ensure that these most fundamental freedoms are protected and that all our laws reflect this.”
ADF UK did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].
EDITOR’S NOTE: Long the world’s most Christian nation, America today is being taken over by a new “official” national religion, one being imposed on the entire populace by every major societal institution, from government, media and big tech, to academia, entertainment and business.
This new state religion is Wokeism. “Going woke” conjures up visions of someone claiming to be acutely sensitive (“awake”) to “systemic social and political injustice.” And not just alleged bigotry against blacks, but toward every other “minority” as well, from LGBT folk – especially everything transgender and “nonbinary” – to “undocumented immigrants.” All of them, being VICTIMS, intrinsically more virtuous than the shameful oppressor class: primarily heterosexual white males.
This new “woke” consciousness has turned America upside-down – from the nationwide Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, to tearing down of historic monuments, to demanding multi-million-dollar reparation payments for blacks, to appointing transgenders as top government officials, to rampant reverse discrimination in every area of life, to the U.S. military imposing mandatory “diversity training” and transgender pronoun use on all personnel, causing recruitment to disastrously plummet.
Yet there is hope. Being “saved” – which in Wokeism is called being “woke” – is largely a matter of worshipping victimhood by becoming an “ally” and “defender” of all the many victim classes, and a determined enemy of the straight white male oppressor class. Thus, “joining the righteous” as an ally – even if one is cursed to be a straight white male – opens the door mercifully for salvation, even to the most wretched.
That is the power of the religion of Wokeism. And it’s explored as never before in the February 2023 issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine. If you’ve ever wondered, for example, exactly how the most radical elements in American society are successfully pressuring the biggest corporations into adopting the most outrageous and immoral policies imaginable, even when doing so permanently damages and devalues the company, the stunning answers are in this issue of Whistleblower, titled “WOKEISM: AMERICA’S OFFICIAL STATE RELIGION.”
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
