A Christian woman has been convicted of breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone after holding an indication offering help.
Dr Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, was found guilty at Poole Magistrates’ Court. She was sentenced to a conditional discharge and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £20,000 in full by 31 May. A fundraising campaign is underway to assist her cover the prices.
She said her conviction was “a dark day for Great Britain”.
“I used to be not protesting and didn’t harass or obstruct anyone,” she said.
“All I did was offer consensual conversation in a public place, as is my basic right, and yet the court found me guilty.”
Dr Tossici-Bolt was prosecuted after refusing to pay a hard and fast penalty notice for holding a check in an abortion clinic buffer zone in Bournemouth that said “Here to speak, for those who want”.
The buffer zone bans acts of approval and disapproval towards abortion. Dr Tossici-Bolt argued that her sign merely offered consensual conversations with women accessing the power and didn’t express approval or disapproval towards abortion, and was due to this fact not in breach of the buffer zone regulations.
She was convicted despite an unusual intervention by the US State Department wherein it suggested that free speech was essential to US-UK relations.
She is weighing up her legal options after her conviction today.
“Freedom of expression is in a state of crisis within the UK. What has happened to this country? The US State Department was right to be concerned by this case because it has serious implications for your entire Western world,” she said.
“I remain committed to fighting totally free speech, not just for my very own sake but for all my fellow residents. If we allow this precedent of censorship to face, no person’s right to freely express themselves is secure.”
Her lawyer, Lorcán Price, of the Alliance Defending Freedom UK (ADF), said, “Everyone who cares about free speech should care about ‘buffer zones’. A Christian woman has been convicted merely for offering to speak on a public street in Britain. This ruling should show all reasonable people who, beyond the shadow of a doubt, abortion facility ‘buffer zones’ are incompatible with a free society.”
The judge presiding over her case recently convicted one other pro-lifer, Adam Smith-Connor, whose appeal hearing might be heard in July.
He was also prosecuted by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) council, which in response to The Telegraph newspaper, has spent almost £150,000 on the cases despite being cash-strapped.
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