The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom has always rested on more than shared military alliances or financial markets. The two countries have been bound together by a common heritage of freedom—the conviction that government exists to protect liberty, not police it. But in today’s Britain, that heritage is under strain.
In the U.K., peaceful citizens have been arrested simply for praying silently in their heads near an abortion facility. Not for shouting, not for intimidating, not for obstructing access—but for thinking thoughts of prayer.
The United States government has taken notice. This week, Washington issued its strongest rebuke yet, condemning Britain’s “buffer zones” around abortion clinics as “an egregious violation” of free speech, echoing remarks made by Vice President JD Vance in his Munich Security Conference speech in February. When the U.S. State Department declares that Britain’s censorship “represents a concerning departure from the shared values that ought to underpin U.S.-U.K. relations,” both Brits and Americans should pay attention.
These warnings aren’t abstract. In Bournemouth, army veteran Adam Smith-Connor was tried, convicted, and forced to pay over £9,000 for praying for a few minutes in his head across the road from an abortion facility, in remembrance of a child he had lost. In Glasgow, 75-year-old Rose Docherty was arrested for displaying a sign within 200 meters of a hospital reading “coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” These are not extremists. They are ordinary people, criminalized for the most peaceful expression imaginable.
British lawmakers defend anti-free speech laws in the name of “protecting women.” Yet how fragile is our notion of women’s rights if it cannot withstand the presence of a woman offering conversation? And how hollow is a democracy that treats prayer as a public threat? In Scotland, the architect of the law admitted that it may criminalize citizens living in the zone for praying visibly even within their home, “depending on who’s passing the window.” The truth is stark: Britain has crossed the line from regulating protest to policing thought.
It’s reasonable for Americans gazing over the Atlantic to have raised concerns. First, because the erosion of liberty in a close ally exposes cracks in the foundation of the West’s moral order. If Britain can declare prayer a punishable offense, how long before the same rationales find their way across the Atlantic?
Second, because the United States and Britain have long justified their alliance on shared values. Liberty of conscience and freedom of speech are not just abstract principles. They are the moral glue that has bound together the transatlantic partnership for generations. If those values are abandoned in London, what does that mean for Washington?
Nobody was harmed by Rose or Adam’s peaceful presence. Someone might even have been helped. Criminalizing peaceful prayer and offers of help or conversation serves no woman. It isolates them further. True compassion provides company—it does not silence.
The United States is right to raise its voice and amplify the same concerns Brits have been raising for years. These repressive laws aren’t just embarrassing us on the world stage—they’re risking the freedom of our friends and neighbors who just want to be free to think their own thoughts on their own streets.
The special relationship cannot be sustained on military spending and trade deals alone. It depends on something deeper: the conviction that conscience is sacred, that free speech is worth protecting, and that liberty is not a privilege granted by the state but a right that precedes it.
If Britain continues down the path of criminalizing thought and prayer, the alliance risks being reduced to polite diplomacy while its moral core rots away. America should not only sound the alarm but resolve not to follow Britain’s lead. For the sake of liberty on both sides of the Atlantic, now is the time to defend the freedom to speak and to pray—even in silence.
Lois McLatchie (@LoisMcLatch) is a Scottish commentator and writer for ADF UK.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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