A woman arrested by British police faces charges of “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” for standing still and praying silently outside an abortion facility.
Video footage of her arrest was published on social media. The video shows an officer asking Vaughan-Spruce if she was praying, to which she answers: “I might be praying in my head.”
Following a further exchange with police, the 45-year-old was arrested and interrogated. Vaughan-Spruce is the director of March for Life UK.
She was charged Dec. 15 with four counts of breaking a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) around the abortion facility. A PSPO is intended to stop antisocial behavior. The terms of the PSPO include prayer under ‘protest,’ which is banned within the ‘buffer zone’ around the clinic.
Vaughan-Spruce is accused of “protesting and engaging in an act that is intimidating to service users” for standing still and praying silently inside a buffer zone.
At the time of Vaughan-Spruce’s arrest, the abortion facility outside which she was standing was closed.
Speaking about her pro-life work, Vaughan-Spruce said, “I have devoted much of my life to supporting women in crisis pregnancies with everything that they need to make an empowered choice for motherhood.”
“My faith is a central part of who I am, so sometimes I’ll stand or walk near an abortion facility and pray about this issue. This is something I’ve done pretty much every week for around the last 20 years of my life.”
“If Isabel had been loudly campaigning against climate change on the street, she would not have been charged for breaking the PSPO,” said Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK.
“But it appears that the police have now charged her solely on the basis of her admissions that she prayed silently, raising her thoughts about abortion to God in her mind.”
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Glasgow, Scotland, Jun 19, 2019 / 11:16 am (CNA).- Some figures in the Catholic Church and Protestant loyalist groups in Scotland are seeking to reach a compromise regarding Protestant marches passing by Catholic churches.
Opposition to Orange walks have increased since last July, when a priest, Canon Tom White, was spat at and verbally abused while greeting parishioners after Mass while an Orange march approached his Glaswegian parish, St. Alphonsus.
Orange marches are organized by the Orange Order, largely in Northern Ireland and Scotland, to commemorate the defeat of James II by William of Orange at the July 1, 1690 Battle of the Boyne. James had been deposed as king of England, Ireland, and Scotland in a 1688 revolution by the Parliament of England after he had expanded toleration of Catholics and Protestant nonconformists in the officially Protestant kingdoms.
In the past year, Orange walks have been rerouted by Glasgow city council to keep them from passing in front of Catholic churches. Organizers have cancelled some of the walks in response to their rerouting.
When Glasgow city council rerouted an Orange march in September, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Glasgow said, “We are grateful that common sense has prevailed. The re-routing of the march will bring relief to the people of St Alphonsus parish and the surrounding area, who viewed with anxiety and fear the prospect of another march past the church so soon after the disgraceful scenes earlier this summer.”
Archbishop Leo Cushley of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh recently told STV that “objectively,” Orange walks passing by Catholic churches “shouldn’t be a problem. If it is done respectfully, I don’t see where the problem is.”
“If it is done to taunt your neighbour that’s a different question but it is difficult for me to look into the hearts of everyone who is going past a church,” the bishop, whose see is located 50 miles east of Glasgow, commented.
In response to Archbishop Cushley, a spokesman for the Grange Orange Lodge of Scotland said that “Roman Catholics, Protestants, and people from many other faiths and none, all live harmoniously in communities right across Scotland,” The Herald, a Glasgow daily, reported June 18.
The spokesman added: “This should mean that we can all share the same roads and streets as we each celebrate our own heritage and culture. We will certainly play our part in ensuring that our parades are respectful when passing any place of worship … it is our hope that we find a shared solution that demonstrates that it is perfectly ok to have different religious views and opinions, without the need for religious divisions and divides.”
Dave Scott of Nil by Mouth, an anti-sectarian charity based in Glasgow, commented that “Archbishop Cushley is providing clear-eyed and thoughtful analysis of the situation and the statement in response from the Orange Order would suggest they recognise this and the need for genuine dialogue moving forward.”
Call It Out, a campaign against anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Irish racism in Scotland, said on Twitter that “We intend no disrespect whatsoever to [Archbishop Cushley] but we very much doubt he has had much experience of anti-Catholic marches or has consulted the Catholic community across Scotland of their own experiences of these parades.”
Scotland has experienced significant sectarian division since the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century, which led to the formation of the Church of Scotland, an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition which is the country’s largest religious community.
Sectarianism and crimes motivated by anti-Catholicism have been on the rise in Scotland in recent years.
An April 2018 poll of Catholics in Scotland found that 20 percent reported personally experiencing abuse of prejudice toward their faith; and a government report on religiously-motivated crime in 2016 and 2017 found a concentration of incidents in Glasgow.
Call It Out has indicated it will organize counter-protests of any Orange walk passing by a Catholic parish, while some Orange groups have said they won’t accept rerouting, according to The Herald.
In April the Protestant fraternal society the Apprentice Boys of Derry cancelled an an Easter walk after the Glasgow city council insisted that it not pass in front of St. Alphonsus.
Polic Scotland have indicated that public disorder is likely if Orange walks take place in front of some Catholic churches in Glasgow, requiring a disproportionate number of officers to keep the peace.
A mother and her baby who were served by one of Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers. / Photo courtesy of Pregnancy Care Alliance of Massachusetts
Boston, Mass., Jul 21, 2023 / 15:02 pm (CNA).
Pro-life pregnancy centers in Massachusetts have allied to enhance collaboration and share resources amid hostility from advocates for abortion.
CNA has tracked more than 60 pro-abortion attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers since May 2022 — four of which occurred in the Bay State — in which vandals have marked pro-life facilities with threatening graffiti and in some cases broken windows and burned down buildings.
Last year, ordinances were enacted in the cities of Cambridge and Somerville, located north of Boston, to issue fines of up to $300 for every instance of “deceptive” advertising by local pregnancy clinics that do not perform abortions or refer clients to those that do perform them.
Other municipalities have attempted to adopt the same ordinance. The state Legislature is currently considering a bill that contains the same language targeting “deceptive advertising” from pro-life pregnancy centers, although there is no definition of the term in it.
That bill in the state Legislature is “clearly aiming to censor protected speech,” Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life (MCFL), told CNA on July 20.
Myrna Maloney Flynn, president of Massachusetts Citizens for Life. Myrna Maloney Flynn
MCFL came up with the idea for the pregnancy center alliance in 2022 to serve as a “hub” for the member pregnancy centers, Flynn said.
“The network was formed with a dual mission of building public awareness and also serving more women,” Flynn said.
One of the ways the alliance is working to share its message is through video testimonials on YouTube of women whose lives were positively impacted through the services of pro-life pregnancy centers.
A 29-year-old woman named “Crystal,” who was able to save the life of her son through the abortion pill reversal method, gave her testimony in a video dated May 17.
After regretting her visit to a Planned Parenthood, Crystal shared her experience with the women working at Abundant Hope pregnancy resource center in Attleboro, Massachusetts.
“There I met the most amazing group of women that really helped me feel confident in my decision and really supported me through the abortion pill reversal,” she said of her visit.
“I am so happy to say that thanks to them and their support, I was able to deliver my son and we had him last April, and he really is the light of my life,” Crystal said.
Flynn said that both MCFL and the pregnancy center alliance are “eager” to tell the stories of women who benefited from the centers. The collaboration means they can wage an effective social media campaign across different platforms.
“Now we work together to come up with creative campaigns, or hashtags or fundraisers, or a series of open houses that we held earlier this year,” she said.
“We’re hitting multiple audiences way more efficiently than each center could do on [its] own. And so, consequently, we hope that in a shorter amount of time, the public in Massachusetts will be better informed and more widely informed about the truth of pregnancy resource centers,” she added.
Flynn will be testifying in front of a joint committee in the state’s Legislature on July 24 in order to oppose the passage of the “deceptive advertising” bill called “An Act to protect patient privacy and prevent unfair and deceptive advertising of pregnancy-related services.”
The bill says: “No limited services pregnancy center, with the intent to perform a pregnancy-related service, shall make or disseminate before the public, or cause to be made or disseminated before the public, in any newspaper or other publication, through any advertising device, or in any other manner, including, but not limited to, through use of the internet, any statement concerning any pregnancy-related service or the provision of any pregnancy-related service that is deceptive, whether by statement or omission; and a limited services pregnancy center knows or reasonably should know to be deceptive.”
Using data taken from the member pregnancy centers in the alliance, Flynn will testify that no clinic that is part of the Pregnancy Care Alliance has received complaints related to “deceptive advertising.”
“Furthermore, Pregnancy Care Alliance centers maintain consistently high satisfaction ratings by their clients,” she said. “Thousands of women have found pregnancy resource centers via internet searches and are grateful that they did.”
In March of this year, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, signed a $389 million supplemental budget bill that included a $1 million “public awareness campaign focused on the dangers of crisis pregnancy centers and pregnancy resource centers.”
It’s unclear how the state is planning to use the funds, as CNA inquired with the governor’s office but did not receive a response. However, Flynn said that MCFL is planning to launch a counter-campaign soon called “$1 million for women.”
“The funds raised would support Pregnancy Care Alliance’s member centers and, by extension, women,” Flynn said.
“By nature of the fact of being a network, these pregnancy resource centers become stronger, and with MCFL as the hub, we can help to make them stronger and spread the word about what they do and correct misinformation in the public sphere,” Flynn said.
Several other states have initiatives bringing pro-life pregnancy centers together in collaboration, such as Indiana, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.
The Pregnancy Care Alliance website can be found here.
The Monastery of Città della Pieve in Italy. / Credit: Monastery of Città della Pieve
ACI Stampa, Dec 26, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Sister Chiara Antonella has a very special story. Blind from birth, she has been able to put this adversity to good… […]
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