State Department officials reportedly met with British anti-abortion activists over concerns that their rights to free speech were being violated
US officials recently travelled to the UK to meet with local anti-abortion campaigners who Washington believes face retribution for expressing their views, The Telegraph reported on Saturday. The paper described the move as evidence of Washington’s desire to “intervene in domestic British affairs.”
In March, the State Department dispatched a delegation from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), to meet with officials from the Foreign Office and communications regulator Ofcom to “affirm the importance of freedom of expression in the UK and across Europe.”
The talks, which also overlapped with separate UK-US trade negotiations, focused on Britain’s new online safety act and its potential consequences for freedom of speech.
However, the five-member US team also quietly met with British activists who had been arrested for protesting outside abortion clinics, the article said. The US officials also reportedly attended an event held at a “nondescript” office block where campaigners were present.
“The visit is the latest sign of the Trump administration’s willingness to intervene in domestic British affairs,” The Telegraph noted.
While the paper did not provide details on whom the US officials met, Washington has sounded the alarm over several controversial cases where the right to free speech in the UK may have been violated.
One of them was that of Livia Tossici-Bolt, a 64-year-old campaigner who was charged in 2023 for holding a sign reading “here to talk if you want” outside an abortion clinic in Bournemouth. She refused to leave when asked by police and faced prosecution under a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) – a legal restriction that creates a 150-meter buffer zone around facilities providing abortion services.
In February, US Vice President J.D. Vance also singled out the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old British army veteran and anti-abortion activist, who was convicted in October 2024 for silently praying near the same Bournemouth clinic. Vance called it a “most concerning case” and said it illustrated the threats to the “basic liberties of religious Britons.”
UK law enforcement has been criticized for so-called “two-tier policing,” a term suggesting that much harsher measures are often taken against right-wing protesters than against left-wing ones. Elon Musk, a close Trump ally, has been particularly vocal on the matter, blasting the UK over its response to what he described as a disproportionate response to anti-immigration demonstrations.
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