36: The Criminalisation of Prayer

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce is the guest on this week’s episode of Merely Catholic, the podcast series for the Catholic Herald.

The pro-life counsellor was arrested and charged by police in December after she admitted to them that she “might be” praying silently in her head outside a closed abortion facility in Birmingham. The Crown Prosecution Services have since dropped the charges but Miss Vaughan-Spruce intends to apply for a court verdict on whether she was breaking any laws.

She talks to Dr Gavin Ashenden about her experience and about the chilling implications for such human rights as freedom of speech, expression, conscience, association and religion under new regulations which brook no public dissent from the culture of death.