A Christian charity volunteer has pleaded not guilty to five charges of breaching an abortion clinic buffer zone in Birmingham, as her lawyers challenge whether the prosecution should proceed.
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce entered the pleas at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on 7 October after Judge Tan Ikram allowed prosecutors to replace the earlier charges with separate counts covering five alleged incidents.
The case concerns her presence outside an abortion clinic, where she says she was praying silently. Prosecutors allege she intended to influence, or was reckless as to whether her actions influenced, decisions about accessing or providing abortion services.
Vaughan-Spruce was charged in December 2025 under the Public Order Act 2023, which came into effect in October 2024, establishing 150-metre 'safe access zones' around abortion facilities in England and Wales.
The law makes it an offence to try to influence someone’s decision about abortion services, block their access or cause harassment, alarm or distress. It also covers actions taken without regard for whether they could have those effects.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which is supporting her case, said that during the preliminary hearing the judge questioned the wording of the original charges, describing them as “not properly drafted”.
According to ADF, the judge also commented: “This case is not about abortion rights; it is about a criminal offence which Parliament has defined … Courts are not here to pass judgment on people’s views."
Vaughan-Spruce’s lawyers argue that her conduct falls outside the legislation and that prosecuting her infringes on protections for freedom of thought and religion under the European Convention on Human Rights.
They also contend that she has been treated differently because her opposition to abortion is known, arguing that her presence would otherwise not have been regarded as an offence.
“Standing silently and holding certain beliefs in a public space should never be a crime,” Vaughan-Spruce said in a statement.
Jeremiah Igunnubole, a barrister and legal counsel for ADF, said: “To criminally charge someone simply for holding a certain belief within a certain location amounts to thought policing, which has no place in a democratic society.”
The proceedings follow an earlier case brought under a local Public Spaces Protection Order. Vaughan-Spruce was acquitted in 2023 after prosecutors offered no evidence. She was arrested again weeks later and received a £13,000 settlement from West Midlands Police in 2024 following a challenge over the two arrests, according to the organisation.
Her defence has asked the court to halt the current prosecution as an "abuse of process".
Vaughan-Spruce said she was “deeply troubled” by the latest prosecution against her, describing it as a “violation of the basic right to my own thoughts and to my deeply-held Christian pro-life convictions”.
"I pray that common sense and freedom will prevail, so that no one else has to face criminal treatment for what they believe," she said.
Igunnubole added, “Far from criminalising harassment and abusive behaviour - which are already criminal offences - buffer zones are being used to punish those engaged in peaceful conduct for nothing other than what they think or believe.
“This censorial, over-broad law has shown itself to be deeply flawed, liable to misuse along ideological lines, and harmful to basic freedoms. If simply thinking the ‘wrong’ thing can result in criminal prosecution, the UK can no longer call itself a free country."
