UK pro-life activist pleads not guilty to silent prayer in buffer zone

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a Catholic pro-life activist, pleaded not guilty at Birmingham Magistrates' Court to five charges of silent prayer within a 150-metre abortion clinic buffer zone. She is the first person charged under England and Wales's national law, and the judge said mere standing is not a crime and intent must be proved. The case tests whether private religious conviction can be treated as an offence, a pressure on the open practice of faith that Jesus warned would grow before the end (Matthew 24:9).