by PAUL COLLITS – HAVING twice faced the serious possibility of losing my daughter this year, I can only imagine the anguish of those who have actually participated in the death their own child – only later to be remorseful.
TV’s Father Brown, who may or may not bear a passing resemblance to the literary character of the same name invented by GK Chesterton, is fond of saying, “God knows what it is to lose a child”.
- A sickeningly low point has been reached.
- This man was standing quietly on the pavement, deep in remorseful thought.
- Any form of protest outside abortion clinics is “finally illegal” across all of Australia.
Indeed. Losing a child must surely be the ultimate crushing of a parent. The tragedies of post-natal depression driven killings, of the depression of fathers who snap having been denied parental access to their children, of the child victims of drunk drivers on the roads, of childhood cancers and of SIDS, come readily to mind.
CONVICTED
This week, a man named Adam Smith-Connor was convicted in Britain for thinking something.
He made the mistake of standing outside, or at least proximate to, an abortion clinic (in 2022), and silently praying.
He was mourning the loss of a baby to whose abortion he had contributed in a parental decision some decades earlier.
The Bournemouth Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday found Mr Smith-Connor guilty of silent prayer.
This court sentenced him to a conditional discharge and ordered him to pay prosecution costs of £9000 (A$11,700).
A demonstration? Hardly
Anyway, Adam’s support page notes: “Adam Smith-Connor is an ordinary man. He’s a husband, a father, and a practicing physiotherapist providing for his family. But his courage is extraordinary. The British Army veteran and Christian is unafraid to defend his faith or share his pro-life views publicly.
“Before Adam’s conversion to Christianity, he had paid for the abortion of his first son, Jacob, whom he conceived with an ex-girlfriend – a decision that he deeply regrets.
“He has found forgiveness, but knows first-hand the trauma of abortion and the loss of life it causes. That’s why he silently prays in public – about his own son, about other unborn babies and their mothers, and fathers.”
In other words, he is doing God’s work, nobly and with a heavy heart. Yes, he found God.
Many will sneer at that, of course. But he also found profound humanity. He is, as Billy Joel might have said, an innocent man.
Adam stated: “Today, the court has decided that certain thoughts — silent thoughts — can be illegal in the United Kingdom. That cannot be right.
“All I did was pray to God, in the privacy of my own mind — and yet I stand convicted as a criminal?
“I served 20 years in the army reserves, including a tour in Afghanistan, to protect the fundamental freedoms that this country is built upon.”
It certainly strikes one as a shock to the system, on its face. Or is it?
I suppose that if the secular State can take away the right to life of a baby inside the building, it would appear an easy, further step to take away the right of free speech outside the building.
Oops. Hang on, the man didn’t actually say anything. So technically, not a matter of free speech, but free thought. Freedom of belief, of course, is upstream from free speech, as Australia’s great former Deputy PM John Anderson has recognised.
(As an aside, I wonder how anyone knew what Adam was thinking … I suppose he just fessed up.)
It is literally a thoughtcrime. Is it a world first? It might well be.
Certainly, the Stasi or the Gestapo or the KGB could, and did, routinely march innocent people off to the gulag or the executioner, often via a show trial, for doing nothing wrong.
CRIME
Arguably, these poor souls were guilty of some thought crime or other. But this is surely new to Western democracies.
A sickeningly low point has been reached. And Smith-Connor wasn’t actually opposing anything or anyone, unlike many of the Soviet, Nazi or East German dissident-victims.
He was just standing on the pavement, deep in remorseful thought. The pictures attest to that.
Will this cause a shock to the untutored voter class, either in Britain or here? Probably not.
After all, the political class in Australia has moved against such “protests”, State by miserable State. These are the so-called “exclusion zones”.
Protests outside abortion clinics are “finally illegal” across all of Australia.
Finally? Finally? It isn’t as if Australians were marching in the streets demanding this “reform”.
Most socially liberal legislation is top-down. No one is ever demanding it. Just like MP Alex Greenwich’s latest (alas, successful) effort in NSW in support of more LGBTQ “privilege”.
Most people probably don’t know this piece of legislative detritus has passed, or what is in it, or what it portends. (To be fair, only a handful of trannies probably “demanded” Greenwich’s legislation.)
ANGER
But this British case at hand involved no harassment, no interactions with anyone, no words spoken in anger. No violence. No placards. Nothing.
The State has championed abortion to the max, in an unholy alliance with post-sexual revolutionaries and radical feminists – and “liberated men”.
The State is therefore heavily invested in punishing abortion dissent. It is not an innocent bystander, a neutral referee.
But it turns out that this stance by the State is all a piece of the State’s rabid anti-children policies.
Australian and other Western governments haven’t got much to be proud of when it comes to safeguarding-children. The COVID years taught us that.
Thousands of children have been killed or sentenced to a life of heart disease as a result of mandated vaccination, which was not remotely needed for young people.
These same governments allow children to change their gender through puberty blockers and subsequent acts of mutilation, without parental consent (of course).
They allow babies to be aborted up to birth. They poison young minds through hideous “safe schools” programs and teaching sexual techniques to infants. They have actively participated in the decline in standards of literacy and numeracy, sentencing children to a life of ignorance. They want that, of course.
They have outsourced the raising of children from parents to day-care centres – and billed the taxpayer.
No, the secular State doesn’t like babies and children. It doesn’t much care for them, in both senses of that phrase.
It should, therefore, be no surprise that it takes the side of abortionists against the silent dissidents who beg to differ.
One of the defining differences between the West and its enemies has been our utter commitment to free speech. Not anymore.
Now we face jail-time for wrong-talk, thanks to Albo, Michelle Rowland and Julie Inman-Grant.
Oh, and now, wrong-think too, certainly in the UK. No words needed.
As Adam said: “All I did was pray to God.” PC
How can it be proven a person isn’t praying for a bus or taxi?
How can anyone be charged for praying for anything.
This is the slippery slide towards dictatorship.
Please pray for God’s guidance ????