A charity volunteer has been charged with “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” after she was arrested in an abortion buffer zone while praying silently.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 45, was standing still and silently when police approached her. When asked what she was doing, she clarified that she was not protesting, but “might be” praying inside her mind.

She was searched, arrested, interrogated, and charged on four counts for breaking the so-called “buffer zone” around a Birmingham abortion facility. Based on the charges, the act of standing silently was deemed “intimidating” behaviour, even though the abortion facility was closed and there was no discernible subject of this intimidation, and despite her clear admission that she was not there to protest, according to a law firm representing her.

Vaughan-Spruce will face court on 2nd February. ADF UK are supporting her defense.

“Nobody should be arrested because of their silent thoughts. Isabel has been clear that all she had done in the PSPO zone since it was instituted in November was to pray, silently, in the privacy of her own mind. Had police not asked her what she was doing, and had she not let them know that she “might” be praying in her mind, there are no grounds under which she would have been charged for breaking the PSPO,” explained Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, supporting Isabel Vaughan-Spruce.