A WOMAN who is being prosecuted for the alleged breach of a “buffer zone” outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic has said she is “grateful” after the US State Department expressed concern over the case.
Anti-abortion campaigner Livia Tossici-Bolt was on trial at Poole Magistrates’ Court last month accused of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order on two days in March 2023 with the verdict set to be given on Friday April 4.
The case involved the 64-year-old holding a sign saying “Here to talk, if you want”.
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, & Labour (DRL), a bureau within the US Department of State, issued a statement on Twitter/X on Sunday which said: “US-UK relations share a mutual respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.
“However, as Vice President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom.
“While recently in the UK, DRL senior adviser Sam Samson met with Livia Tossici-Bolt, who faces criminal charges for offering conversation within a legally prohibited ‘buffer zone’ at an abortion clinic.
“We are monitoring her case. It is important that the UK respect and protect freedom of expression.”
Vance used a speech in Munich to argue Europe was seeing a shift away from democratic values. He claimed the “basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular” are under threat, citing the Scottish Government law as an example.
Buffer zone campaigners warned that Vance is "completely misrepresenting the facts" as politicians claimed his comments "emboldened" anti-abortion groups.
Greens MSP Gillian MacKay, who spearheaded the legislation in Scotland, responded to the intervention, saying it was "the last thing we need".
"The vice president has already misrepresented buffer zones, empowering some of the most reactionary and anti-choice groups in our country," Mackay told The National.
"The last thing we need is for the White House to involve itself even more in cases and incidents that are absolutely nothing to do with it.
"Abortion rights are human rights, and they are healthcare. There is no excuse for harassing people outside hospitals and the US government should not be giving it their blessing.
"I urge the UK government to stand with patients and medical staff and call out this cynical attempt to intimidate.
"For all of the State Department's talk about human rights and fundamental freedoms, they are part of an administration that is actively undermining, rolling back and eroding women's rights."
The Telegraph has quoted a source “familiar with trade negotiations” between the UK and US as saying that there should be “no free trade without free speech”.
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said that free speech has not been part of tariff negotiations with the US.
He told Times Radio: “Obviously, there are things from different people in the administration that they’ve said in the past about this, but it’s not been part of the trade negotiations that I’ve been part of.”
Dr Tossici-Bolt, a retired medical scientist living in Bournemouth, Dorset, said: “I am grateful to the US State Department for taking note of my case.
“Great Britain is supposed to be a free country, yet I’ve been dragged through court merely for offering consensual conversation. I’m thankful to ADF International for supporting my legal defence.
“Peaceful expression is a fundamental right — no one should be criminalised for harmless offers to converse.”
She added: “It is tragic to see that the increase of censorship in this country has made the US feel it has to remind us of our shared values and basic civil liberties.
“I’m grateful to the US administration for prioritising the preservation and promotion of freedom of expression and for engaging in robust diplomacy to that end.
“It deeply saddens me that the UK is seen as an international embarrassment when it comes to free speech.
“My case, involving only a mere invitation to speak, is but one example of the extreme and undeniable state of censorship in Great Britain today.
“It is important that the government actually does respect freedom of expression, as it claims to.”
Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) International, said: “The UK’s censorship crisis is the result of a long-standing failure by British politicians to vigilantly protect fundamental rights in the UK, while hypocritically claiming to champion them abroad.
“We cannot consistently claim the UK is a bastion of free speech when law-abiding citizens like Livia are prosecuted for nothing other than peacefully offering to speak to people.
“It is right for the US State Department and JD Vance to warn the UK that censorship is antithetical to freedom, democracy, and societal flourishing.”
