U.S. Vice President JD Vance said last week that Scotland’s government told people who live near abortion facilities that “even private prayer within their own homes” may violate a law that creates a “buffer zone” banning pro-life activities there.

Is that true?

Supporters of the law say it isn’t. Neither the law nor a letter from the government explaining it mentions prayer in a home.

But opponents of the law say it’s not clear what the law covers, so Vance’s point may be correct.

What is clear is that in both Scotland and neighboring England, authorities consider it illegal to pray silently near an abortion facility.

Lois McLatchie Miller, senior legal communications officer of Alliance Defending Freedom International, on Tuesday posted on social media a video of a police officer reading a piece of paper to a pro-lifer stating that a “silent vigil” violates Scotland’s law. (It’s not clear from the posting when or where the video was taken or what the result was. McLatchie Miller could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.)

The officer’s interpretation was correct. According to Scotland’s government, the Save Access Zones law, which came into effect Sept. 24, 2024, bans “silent vigils,” “handing out leaflets” and “religious preaching,” among other things, within 200 meters (about 650 feet) of the boundaries of a facility that provides abortions.

“This list is not exhaustive and enforcement agencies will reach their own decisions on whether an offence has been committed,” the website of Scotland’s government states.

“Anyone who breaks Safe Access Zone laws could be fined up to £10,000 [more than $12,000] under summary procedure or to an unlimited amount under solemn procedure,” the website states. (A “solemn procedure” in Scotland refers to a case that results in indictment and a trial by jury.)

 

What About What Vance Said?

Vance spoke Friday at the Munich Security Conference about what he called “the retreat of Europe” from “our shared democratic values.”

As evidence, he cited several cases of democratically elected governments in Europe prosecuting someone for engaging in speech, including Adam Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist convicted in October 2024 of silently praying outside an abortion facility in November 2022 in Bournemouth, England. He was ordered to pay more than 9,000 British pounds in court costs and given two years of conditional discharge, according to the BBC.

“Now I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person,” Vance said. “But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called safe-access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.”

Supporters of the abortion-buffer-zone law cried foul.

“There were letters sent to all the households that were within safe-access zones. But in both the act and the letter itself, silent prayer is never mentioned,” said Gillian Mackay, a Green Party member of the Scottish Parliament and author of the abortion-buffer-zones bill, in an interview with the BBC. “It’s never been outlawed, and there are no mentions of any specific behaviors, either in the act or in the letter itself.”

The September 2024 letter from the Scottish government, posted on social media in October by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which defends pro-lifers, tells homeowners that the abortion-buffer-zones law generally applies to public spaces. 

“However,” it adds, “activities in a private place (such as a house) within the area between the protected premises and the boundary of a Zone could be an offence if they can be seen or heard within the Zone and are done intentionally or recklessly.”

As Mackay said, the word “prayer” does not appear in the legislation, which bans “influencing the decision of another person to access, provide, or facilitate the provision of abortion services at the protected premises,” among other things.

But McLatchie Miller argued Tuesday that the video of Scottish police officers confronting a woman keeping a silent vigil while holding a sign suggests the same logic could be applied to someone doing something similar on his own property.

“Ergo, being seen to pray inside a home near an abortion clinic could be criminalised under this ambiguous law,” McLatchie Miller said in a social-media post Tuesday.

 

Pro-Lifers Say Vigils Are Vital

While Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, it has had its own parliament since 1999.

Local abortion buffer zones have been enacted in neighboring England in recent years, including one in Birmingham in September 2022. In May 2023, the British Parliament enacted a similar abortion-buffer-zone law for all of England and Wales.

In March 2024, pro-lifers appearing before the Scottish Parliament’s Health, Social Care, and Sport Committee said vigils outside abortion facilities ought to be protected under freedom of expression.

Alina Dulgheriu told the committee about how she went for an abortion in 2011 out of desperation even though she wanted her baby to live.

“I wanted to keep her but I didn’t know how, so my hope rapidly began to fade. The day that I turned up to my abortion appointment, a volunteer outside the clinic gently gave me a leaflet. Somewhere beneath the palpable anxiety and pressure, I felt it provided me with exactly what I was longing for,” Dulgheriu said. “Some will say I already chose abortion but the truth is I didn’t choose it. The pro-life feature gave me the hope I was searching for. Had I not received the support from volunteers, my beautiful daughter would not have been here today.”

The “law turns everyone who volunteers advice into criminals,” she said.

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, who leads pro-life vigils in Birmingham, told the Health, Social Care, and Sport Committee she has been arrested for “standing silently” near a closed abortion center. Buffer zones, she said, have led to pro-lifers “being demonized.”

“What people hear or read about us is the chief cause of anxiety and, to my knowledge, this issue hasn’t really been addressed at all. My volunteers now pray outside the nearest Catholic church, a long way from the abortion center. Locals have now said they want the church moved, and my volunteers have been screamed at, spat at, sworn at, even physically assaulted,” Vaughan-Spruce said.

 

Abortion Supporters Say Pro-Life Vigils Are Distressing

In February 2024, a representative from the largest abortion provider in England, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, told the same legislative committee in Scotland that the law in England isn’t meant to affect “a private conversation in your own house.”

“However, you can use your private dwelling or another building, something that you own, in order to have exactly the same effect as if those people were stood on a public highway,” said Rachael Clarke, chief of staff of the abortion provider, on Feb. 27, 2024. “Our particular concern was around the posting of very large posters in the window with very distressing images. It was around people … handing leaflets out over a garden wall, where essentially women were having to walk past them.”

Lucy Grieve, co-founder of Back Off Scotland, which supports abortion and the abortion buffer zones, said silent prayer outside an abortion facility ought to be banned.

“I think something that’s very important to us is the fact that, you know, when you bring it down to the sort of the base level and you look at things like silent prayer, for example, it doesn't matter if it’s silent or if it’s, you know, in your face. The actual presence of somebody there targeting you for going for a medical procedure, making a judgment about you, is unacceptable,” Grieve told the Health, Social Care, and Sport Committee during the hearing in February 2024.

Alice Murray said that when she went for an abortion in 2019 during her third year at the University of Edinburgh, she saw five to seven pro-lifers standing on the other side of the street. They prayed silently and occasionally sang a hymn. Some held signs, she said.

“The long-term impacts of facing the protesters for me have been really significant. It’s definitely really impacted the way that I could process my experience and think about my experience,” Murray said.

She described the experience as “traumatizing.” But she emphasized that the trauma has nothing to do with her abortion — which she called “a very easy decision for me” and “the equivalent of getting a tooth out” — claiming it was due to the presence of the pro-lifers, which still bothered her five years later.

“It was all the more traumatizing to walk into a clinic and to have people outside suggest that what you’re doing is wrong and to question your decision — it’s horrible. It’s really kind of emotionally draining,” Murray said.

 

A Different View of Free Speech

Supporters of abortion zones in the United Kingdom offer a view of speech much different from the one that prevails in the United States, where the Supreme Court takes an expansive view of guarantees in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In 2014, for instance, the high court in McCullen v. Coakley unanimously struck down a 35-foot buffer zone outside abortion facilities in Massachusetts because in the justices’ view “the buffer zones have effectively stifled petitioners’ message.”

Dwight Duncan, a constitutional law professor at the University of Massachusetts School of Law, who represented the plaintiff in a previous abortion buffer zones case in the Bay State, noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed certain abortion buffer zones to stand.

“Some of them have been upheld. They have to be very narrowly tailored to protect access and freedom from harassment. But the point is you still should be able to leaflet in that area,” Duncan told the Register. “And they have to be fairly narrowly drawn. Pro-lifers can’t be forced across the street or down the block.”

The letter Scotland’s government sent homeowners who live near abortion facilities in September 2024 would be out of bounds in this country because it limits discussion of a public issue in a public place by people on one side of it, he said.

“Clearly, that letter would be totally over the top in the U.S. because it’s content- and viewpoint-based discrimination in the traditional public forum,” Duncan said.

He noted that among English-speaking countries, “The United States is sort of an outlier on free speech.”

But as Scotland’s law demonstrates, the trend elsewhere appears to be moving in the opposite direction — where even silent acts of conscience can lead to legal consequences.