Prosecuted for Praying: Abortion Battle Lines in Northern Ireland

“If we are not free to express prayer against abortion outside of a clinic without being criminalized, then none of us are free.” Amen!

From The European Conservative

By Jonathon Van Maren

“If we are not free to express prayer against abortion outside of a clinic without being criminalized, then none of us are free.”

Claire Brennan, a 54-year-old Catholic mother of four, went on trial on January 5 in Coleraine Magistrate’s Court in Northern Ireland for the second time. In October 2023, she was arrested for praying outside the Causeway Hospital with fellow Christian David Hall, who uses a wheelchair. Those charges are under appeal. She is now being charged with three more counts of violating the Abortion Services Act in September, October, and November last year.

“I have seen the effects of abortion on women,” Claire Brennan told europeanconservative.com. “I have held women in my arms who have regretted their abortion. I can’t ever forget that heart-wrenching cry from the depths of their soul of deep regret. I touched every single inch of my being. I never again want to see women go through these untold horrors. I vowed I would never stop defending these women, who know not what they do. The abortion industry lies to women.”

The Abortion Services (Safe Access) Act, which criminalizes any form of pro-life speech within 150 meters of where abortions are performed, was given Royal Assent on February 6, 2023. Establishments providing abortion can request ‘buffer zones’ from the Department of Health, creating de facto censorship sectors where freedom of speech is aggressively suppressed. 

These new ‘buffer zones’ have become the frontlines of Northern Ireland’s abortion wars, creating policed, physical boundaries around the expanding Culture of Death. Brennan’s first arrest, for praying the Lord’s Prayer while holding a rosary, went viral; police told her she was being “really ignorant” when she insisted that she had a “moral duty” to pray:

Brennan was convicted under the Abortion Services Act, but in a shock development, she successfully petitioned for County Court Judge Ciaran Moynagh, who was overseeing her appeal, to recuse himself from her case due to his long record of abortion activism. Moynagh had received the Humanist of the Year Award in 2018 for campaigning for abortion and had represented a woman denied an abortion with the support of Amnesty International. He also has a long track record of LGBT activism.

Brennan is scheduled to reappear in court on February 2, and her appeal will also be heard later this year. Three women are named in the charges against her. She is determined to fight Northern Ireland’s abortion regime—which came into effect on March 31, 2020—no matter what it takes.

“I am a devout Catholic Christian that believes in the sanctity of life,” Brennan told europeanconservative.com. “I always protected my friends at school from bullying and the most defenceless of all are children in the womb who have no voice. I will be their voice, and I will fight this law with all I have. I will overturn this law. I will stand in front of judges. I will argue these laws are evil and against holy scripture. I will go to the supreme courts and to the courts of European rights. I will accept the hardships of these courts and the stresses connected to them as an offering to God.”

That includes imprisonment. “I will have no fear, and I will not be deterred even if they put me in jail,” Brennan said. “I will come out fighting harder. Nothing will stop me from protecting these babies and these uninformed mothers.” 

For Brennan, the media campaign to push abortion resembles the propaganda that enabled other great injustices. “The BBC ran a campaign to discredit pro-life outreach and demonize them as harassing women,” she said. “They manipulated the public into believing that we are being unfair and unsympathetic to women if they don’t support abortion. This is how governments have gained control for centuries, and how Germany manipulated the country against the Jewish people.”

They ran a hate campaign against the Jews for years, until they brainwashed the nation into hatred. This is what they did in Ireland. They used the same manipulation, the same tricks, just a different time in history. In the south of Ireland, they ran a brainwashing campaign over the airwaves for months leading up to the abortion referendum in 2018. They repeated hard cases; it was relentless. They suppressed the truth. They silenced the Christians and blocked the information contrary to their evil agenda.

Brennan is right—in Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, I told the inside story of how the Irish pro-life movement successfully resisted attempts to overthrow protections for pre-born children for decades, before the 2018 referendum was orchestrated by a massive and powerful coalition consisting of every major political party, the press, and international pressure. Pro-life activists are up against enormously powerful forces, and it is ordinary Christians like Brennan who remain on the battlefield.

“We must start to fight back,” Brennan said. “Pro-lifers can do talks in schools or churches, use platforms like social media, or even discuss these topics in their canteens. Everyone can do something in a big or small way, but everyone must do something. We must stand up and stand out without fear. We must go against the tide. We cannot be in the middle. There are many pro-life organizations that do street outreach with informational tables with petitions for people to sign. This is a good way to start engaging people in pro-life conversations.”

She believes that a presence outside places where abortions are performed is especially important. “Prayer vigils outside abortion facilities are desperately needed,” she said. “This can be done using signs, pictures, and other materials that highlight the horror of abortion, or simply standing and praying, which is a beautiful witness and will speak volumes to the public passing by. I want to expose the horror of abortion and take the veil of secrecy that is allowing evil to prevail. I want to soften the hearts of our nation and set the way for the overturning of abortion.”

Freedom is at stake as well. Last December, 76-year-old retired pastor Clive Johnston faced trial in the same courtroom for preaching a sermon on the text “for God so loved the world” from the Gospel of John at the edge of the buffer zone outside Causeway Hospital. He faces two charges, despite not mentioning the word abortion. “There is a vital principle at stake,” said Simon Calvert of The Christian Institute. “If the Gospel can be banned in this public place, where else can it be banned?”

 “It is a deeply disturbing law which tells free citizens that they will be arrested if they pray,” Brennan said in 2024. “The expansion of abortion services in Northern Ireland in recent years has been appalling. Our laws, beliefs, and culture on upholding and protecting life in this country have been trampled on. If we are not free to express prayer against abortion outside of a clinic without being criminalized, then none of us are free.”

For now, it is ordinary men and women like Claire Brennan, David Hall, and Clive Johnston who are fighting on behalf of those with no voice—and they are willing to accept persecution to do so.