A local council facing serious financial challenges spent close to £150,000 prosecuting two people who silently protested outside a UK abortion clinic.
Afghanistan veteran Adam Smith-Connor, 51, was convicted of breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) around the Dean Park Clinic in Bournemouth on November 24, 2022 after holding a vigil for his aborted son.
He was found guilty after a trial at Bournemouth magistrates’ court, handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay £9,000 – less than a tenth of the £93,000 the case cost Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) council to bring, The Telegraph reported.
BCP also spent £45,000 on the two-day trial of Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, who was charged after holding up a sign saying ‘here to talk’ at women entering the same clinic.
The council proceeded with the expensive prosecutions against Mr Smith-Connor and Ms Tossici-Bolt at a time when they were facing severe budgetary restraints.
The local authority was so broke that in 2023 it was even considering turning off street lights on certain residential roads in Poole to try and save money, the Bournemouth Echo reported.
Other extreme cost-saving measures under consideration included dispensing with lollipop men and women, closing public pools, slashing library opening hours – and even reducing the live monitoring of CCTV cameras, DorsetLive found.
The Dean Park Clinic clinic is reportedly one of the most targeted in the country. A PSPO was put in place in 2022 by BCP to prevent any forms of protesting in relation to abortion issues, including prayer and counselling.
Afghanistan veteran Adam Smith-Connor, 51 (pictured here in 2023) was convicted of breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order around the Dean Park Clinic in Bournemouth after holding a vigil for his aborted son in 2022
The Dean Park Clinic in Bournemouth is one of the most targeted in the country by protestors
The protected buffer zone around the Dean Park Clinic, established in 2022, is intended to stop pro-life campaigners harassing women going for an abortion
The order created a 100 metre ‘buffer zone’ around the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) facility.
Speaking in 2022, Conservative councillor Bobbie Dove said: ‘Whilst we acknowledge the right of anyone to conduct a peaceful protest, we had to balance this against the distress caused or likely to be caused, and the detrimental impact of behaviours experienced by those accessing medical services or doing their jobs.’
Campaigners argued that the buffer zone ‘criminalises prayer and reading from the Bible’ and took the council to court, but judges found that the council had ‘lawfully followed the democratic and conservative procedures’ when it issued the order.
Former soldier Smith-Connor, 51, was seen behind a tree about 160ft away from the clinic’s entrance, standing in silence praying with his head bowed for four or five minutes.
In a video taken by Smith-Connor, a chartered physiotherapist, he told the council worker: ‘I’m praying for my son who is deceased.’
Smith-Connor said in court that he is still haunted by the decision he and his then-partner made to abort their unborn child 25 years ago.
His case was raised by US vice president JD Vance in his controversial Munich Security Conference speech to European leaders on February 14.
In the speech Vance accused the UK of a ‘backslide away from conscience rights’ which he said had ‘placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs’.
Abortion campaigner Adam Smith-Connor’s cause was taken up by vice president JD Vance in his controversial Munich Security Conference speech to European leaders on February 14
The Secretary of State for Business and Trade Jonathan Reynolds disagreed with JD Vance’s claims that Christians’ rights were under threat in the UK, adding ‘let’s be clear, we don’t have blasphemy laws in the UK. That’s the right thing. I say that, as a Christian, no-one is arrested for what they are praying about’
Vance said: ‘A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 metres from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
‘After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of his unborn son.
‘He and his former girlfriend had aborted years before. Now the officers were not moved.
‘Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new Buffer Zones Law, which criminalises silent prayer and other actions that could influence a person’s decision within 200 metres of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.’
However, Vance’s claims were challenged by the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Jonathan Reynolds, who said he disagreed with JD Vance’s ‘characterisation’ of Smith Conner’s case and the idea that Christians’ rights were under threat in the UK.
Mr Reynolds told Sky News: ‘On the specific example he gave, let’s be clear, we don’t have blasphemy laws in the UK. That’s the right thing.
‘I say that, as a Christian: no-one is arrested for what they are praying about.’
He added: ‘No-one is subject to any kind of enforcement from the state for praying in this country.
Pro-life campaigner Livia Tossici-Bolt was prosecuted for holding up a sign outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth
The retired medical scientist claimed she was merely offering a service to people seeking more information about the abortion process as she stood outside with the sign
Livia Tossici-Bolt, 63, pictured in Parliament Square holding the sign that has led to her facing prosecution
‘The example he gave was about people being able to access healthcare, in this case, abortions, free of intimidation or harassment. I think that’s an important British value, too.’
In a separate case, 64-year-old Livia Tossici-Bolt allegedly breached a protected buffer zone established outside the facility by going to the clinic twice in two days.
The retired medical scientist claimed she was merely offering a service to people seeking more information about the abortion process as she stood outside with the sign saying ‘Here to talk if you want to’ in March 2023.
She was approached by police and a local council official who told her that one woman had felt harassed by her.
Ms Tossici-Bolt refused to leave the area, saying she was given no legitimate reason to do so. She also rejected a fixed penalty notice issued to her by the council.
She is now being prosecuted for failing to comply with a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO), with the verdict in her trial due to be handed down on April 4.
Ms Tossici-Bolt told magistrates in Poole, Dorset, she was ‘just there if people just wanted to come up and talk to me.’
She added: ‘My signs are solidarity signs. I am just there to offer support. I rejoice when a life is saved. People can say yes or no when they see me.
A Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council sign outlining the safe zone rules
Members of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children demonstrate outside parliament today
‘There is always an element of subjectivity. How can you know what is going on in someone else’s head when you see them in the street? I was not moving to intercept people.
‘I always made sure I did not come across as aggressive. I always try and do it in a loving way. I never tell people to terminate. If they decide to go ahead with the abortion then we can offer support afterwards.’
The Telegraph reported that the legal costs for bringing her case to court amount to £45,000.
New legislation creating safe zones outside abortion clinics came into effect in England and Wales in October 2024.
The new legislation bans protests, including silent prayer, within a 150-metre zone of a clinic or hospital offering abortion services.
People within the zones are banned from trying to influence any woman’s decision to have an abortion, stop them from entering, harass them or cause distress.
The ban includes trying to hand out abortion leaflets, protesting against abortion rights, or shouting at people trying to enter a clinic.
The Home Office said it may also include silent prayer or ‘any behaviour where someone is intentionally trying to – or recklessly acting in a way that might – influence a person accessing the service’.
Clare McCullogh of the Good Counsel Network (left) has created a sign ridiculing the idea that people can be arrested for silently praying
Jeremiah Igunnubole, the legal counsel for ADF UK, which has supported both Mr Smith-Connor and Ms Tossici-Bolt, said free speech was ‘in crisis’ in the UK and called both prosecutions ‘grossly disproportionate’.
He added: ‘In a free country, citizens shouldn’t have to prepare a budget to defend the peaceful exercise of fundamental rights.
‘Far from amounting to ‘harassment and intimidation’, both are peaceful, lawful activities that should be able to take place on any public street in Great Britain.
‘The council’s ideological drive is clear, that they would charge the public purse such exorbitant costs to criminalise particular views.’
A spokesman for BCP council said it was ‘necessary’ for them to hire counsel following a previous legal challenge against the protection order.
They said the PSPO was introduced after public consultation in 2022 to protect those accessing or working at the Dean Park Clinic and added: ‘The Council will continue to monitor any alleged breaches of this PSPO and take appropriate action when it is deemed necessary.’
Other opponents of the new status quo have claimed that the buffer zones around abortion clinics amount to policing thought.
Clare McCullogh has staged vigils outside reproductive clinics across London since 1995 and insists her work with the Good Counsel Network is not intimidating.
Speaking to MailOnline in October last year, she said she will continue to hold vigils outside cordons but other activists may be willing to break the law.
‘For the moment we will hold the vigils further away but it’s not a just law,’ she said.
‘I think people may break the law, I can see vigils will break the law because it is an unjust law, it is kind of a ridiculous law to implement.’
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council have been contacted for further comment.
