UK House Of Commons Refuses To Protect Private Prayer And Consensual Conversations

 

By a landslide vote of 299 to 116, the UK’s House of Commons recently rejected an amendment that would have protected “private prayer and consensual conversations within any ‘censorship’ zone.” (Areas around abortion centers.) 

The vote came just one day after a pro-life activist, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, was arrested for the second time in several weeks for silently praying outside one such center. Vaughan-Spruce noted that she was “not protesting” or engaging “in any of the activities prohibited.” But, dammit, she was thinking the wrong thoughts, and thus had to be arraigned. Charged. Run in. Taught a lesson.

I mean, what kind of society would grant its citizens the right to silently pray by themselves? Some thoughts are simply not acceptable…at least in some areas, right? Surely, we can agree on that! And, if not, maybe you should be detained, too.

Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for a firm that has represented people who have been arrested for committing thought crimes outside of abortion centers, stated sadly that the vote was a “watershed moment for fundamental rights and freedoms” in the UK. Tragically true, in a profoundly regressive way. (Sadder still: according to the Catholic Herald, MPs voting to reject the amendment included the allegedly Conservative government’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Attorney General Victoria Prentis.)

Igunnubole added, “Parliament had an opportunity to reject the criminalization of free thought, which is an absolute right, and embrace individual liberty for all. Instead, Parliament chose to endorse censorship and criminalize peaceful activities such as silent prayer and consensual conversation.”

I am certain that today’s woke Thought Police would go easier on someone who claimed to be silently praying for more “fetuses” to be aborted, or for certain conservatives to succumb to life-threatening diseases.

But it is much the same in the US, where pro-lifers are routinely mocked, harassed, and prevented from being in certain areas, even as pro-abortion activists routinely vandalize or fire-bomb pregnancy centers and Christian churches without consequence.

I would say this is a dangerous precedent, but it is simply part and parcel of the Left’s ongoing, all-out attempt to crush dissent and arrogate power to itself for eternity. You know, in order to preserve “our democracy.”

 In the new New World, as well as in (the formerly) Great Britain, you no longer have the right to privately pray for life…or even to think verboten thoughts. In fact, just about all of our fundamental, natural rights are under assault by power-hungry “progressives.” This has been evidenced by the recent mask and vaccine mandates. We were even told we couldn’t leave our homes. And we obeyed. We can be shunned—and perhaps fined or fired—for “misgendering” someone or using “incorrect” pronouns when referring to them. Are you a climate change “denier?” If so, you will not have access to the mainstream social media platforms.

In the United States, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to protect our God-given rights from tyrannical government. But progressives don’t acknowledge any power above themselves. And they would like to cancel the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, probably several of the following Amendments…and anyone with whom they disagree.

If they succeed, the rest of us really don’t have a prayer, silent or otherwise.