US vice-president told litany of tales of Europe’s rights infringements in speech to leaders at defence gathering. In JD Vance’s confrontational and pugnacious speech at the Munich Security Conference, the vice-president ran through a series of examples to highlight his claims that Europe has gone off the rails. Here, we look at what he said – and whether it stacks up. Speaking about “our very dear friends, the United Kingdom”, Vance claimed a “backslide away from conscience rights” had “placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in particular in the crosshairs”.
The British government, he said, had charged Adam Smith-Conner, a 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”. Vance claimed that Conner told an “unmoved” law enforcement officer that he was praying for an unborn son that he and a former girlfriend had aborted years before. “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,” Vance said. “He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.”.
Fact check. Smith-Connor was convicted of breaching a safe zone in October last year, after refusing repeated requests to move away from outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth in November 2022. The 51-year-old told the council the day before he would be carrying out a silent vigil as he had on previous occasions. On the day, a community officer spoke to him for an hour and 40 minutes and asked him to leave – but he refused. Smith-Connor was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay more than £9,000 costs after the case was brought by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council.
Smith-Connor is receiving legal support from Alliance Defending Freedom International, an American conservative Christian legal advocacy group that states it “champions religious freedom through … advocacy efforts”. ADF International said it would be supporting Smith-Connor to appeal against the decision in July. Smith-Connor’s case was brought after a public space protection order was introduced outside the Bournemouth clinic in October 2022, which banned activity including protests, harassment and vigils.
October last year saw the introduction of the Public Order Act 2023 in England and Wales, which introduced buffer zones of 150 metres around abortion clinics to stop women being harassed with leaflets, shown pictures of foetuses, or having to pass by vigils. The Scottish government was said to have begun 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”. He went on: “The government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime in Britain and across Europe.”.
The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act, introduced last year, introduced safe access zones within 200 metres of abortion clinics, banning harassing, alarming or distressing actions. “Silent prayer” is listed among the banned activities to prevent mass silent vigils that have been used by large groups of US anti-abortion protesters such as 40 Days for Life who gather outside clinics to pressure women entering not to have an abortion.
A Conservative US TikToker erroneously claimed that silent prayer at home could break the law in Scotland. However the law states that the actions are banned if they are likely to cause alarm or distress to someone accessing abortion services. Silent prayer in a home which caused no distress and alarm to other would not fall under this category. A Scottish government spokesperson said: “The vice-president’s claim is incorrect. Private prayer at home is not prohibited within safe access zones and no letter has ever suggested it was.”.
Vance told the Munich security conference that a former European commissioner had “sounded delighted” that an “entire election” in Romania had been annulled. Vance added: “He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too … But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard.”.
The US vice-president was referring to comments by the former European commissioner Thierry Breton. The former French minister had been speaking after the decision by Romania’s constitutional court in December to annul the early results of the country’s presidential election. The court had intervened after declassified intelligence documents pointed to what was described as a massive and “highly organised” campaign for the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, on the TikTok platform that was probably orchestrated by a “state actor”. Georgescu has committed to stop all Romanian political and military support for Ukraine if elected.
