A retired Baptist pastor, Clive Johnston, is facing criminal charges in Northern Ireland for allegedly holding an “open-air Sunday service” on the “fringes” of a buffer zone of a hospital where abortions are performed.
Mr. Johnston, 76, held the service on July 7, 2024, outside the Causeway Hospital at Coleraine. Prosecutors say the sermon violated the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act of 2022, which makes it a crime for individuals to be “impeded, recorded, influenced or to be caused harassment, alarm or distress” in the buffer zone outside a facility that performs abortions.
The former pastor has been charged with conducting a “protest with the intent of or being reckless as to whether it had the effect of influencing a protected person” at the hospital, the Belfast Telegraph reports. He has also been accused of failing to “comply with a direction” from police to leave the area.
The Public Prosecution Service, PPS, told the Belfast Telegraph, that “All PPS decisions are taken impartially, independently, and strictly in line with the Code for Prosecutor.”
The charges come as laws criminalizing protests within buffer zones near facilities where abortions are performed, which critics say are an attack on free speech, have gone into effect throughout the United Kingdom. In some cases, the defendants did not even mention abortion. In October, a British man, Adam Smith-Connor, was convicted of praying silently outside an abortion clinic and ordered to pay more than $11,000 in prosecution fees.
In February, a 74-year-old grandmother, Rose Docherty, became the first person charged for an anti-abortion protest under the Scottish version of the buffer zone law. She is facing a fine of up to 10,000 pounds, or nearly $13,000.
In 2023, a preacher, Stephen Green, 72, was prosecuted for holding a sign with a Bible verse outside of an abortion clinic at London. The sign featured the words of Psalm 139:13, which reads, “For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” He was charged under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act. In February 2024, he was convicted and ordered to pay 2,426 pounds, more than $3,100 dollars.
A Christian charity with a legal defense fund that is representing Mr. Johnnston in the latest such case, the Christian Institute, says Mr. Johnston was “preaching one of the most famous ‘good news’ verses in the Bible [John 3:16] in the vicinity of a general hospital.”
John 3:16 reads, “For God so loved the world,[a] that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
It notes that the former pastor was not accused of mentioning abortion in his sermon or on any banners or placards that were held up during the service. Additionally, the institute said Mr. Johnston was “simply cautioned,” not arrested on July 7, and “later notified of prosecutions by way of a summons.”
The deputy director of the Christian Institute, Simon Calvert, said, “Prosecuting someone for preaching John 3:16 near a hospital on a quiet Sunday is an outrageous restriction on freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”
Mr. Calvert said about a dozen people attended the service, which occurred “on a patch of grass, separated from Causeway Hospital by a dual carriageway,” or divided highway. He said there was a wooden cross, and Mr. Johnston led attendees in the “singing of well-known hymns on a ukulele.”
“It’s just not reasonable or rational to suggest that preaching the Gospel, with no reference to abortion, is a protest against abortion. The Police and the Public Prosecution Service are over-stepping the mark. This is not what buffer zones were designed to do,” he added. “Speech that has nothing to do with abortion should not be criminalized as if it is an anti-abortion protest. This is fundamentally unjust. If prosecutors succeed in getting a conviction against Clive for preaching about God’s love, what will that mean for other forms of non-abortion-related speech in these zones?”
Mr. Calvert said the Christian Institute is defending Mr. Johnston because there is a “vital principle at stake. If the Gospel can be banned in this public space, where else can it be banned?”
Mr. Johnston is scheduled to appear in court on March 21 for a preliminary hearing and could be fined thousands of pounds if he is convicted.