Three months ago Helen Barton was doing her usual hour’s drive to work at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service clinic in Bournemouth when her car’s warning lights started flashing.
Barton, a treatment manager in charge of the clinic’s remote consultation hub, was driving at 70mph on the motorway during rush hour. The last time she had used her car was the previous week, when travelling home from the clinic.
Panicked, she drove straight to a garage, where mechanics told her there was a nail in the rear tyre of the driver’s side and the caps on two other tyres were missing.
She immediately had suspicions about the reason for the damage: hers became one of 24 incidents recorded by the BPAS clinic in which staff vehicles were keyed or targeted with handfuls of nails and screws over the past 18 months. “It was horrible — if I’d had a blowout on the motorway and had a crash, that would have been it,” she said. “I come in on the train now, I won’t drive in any more.”
A BPAS worker’s car was keyed
The clinic in the southwest of England — the region with the lowest abortion rates in England and Wales — found itself at the heart of a transatlantic free speech row this year, when two pro-life protesters were found guilty of breaking a public spaces protection order (PSPO). A council-enforced PSPO, similar to the recently imposed buffer zones outside all abortion clinics in the UK, protects women accessing abortions from harassment.
The attention from the Trump administration started before the trial of Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, a retired medical scientist from Italy, in April. Tossici-Bolt was charged with two counts of breaching the PSPO in March 2023 after she was photographed standing in the zone holding a sign that read: “Here to talk, if you want.”
Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64
GRAHAM HUNT FOR THE TIMES
The US vice-president, JD Vance, speaking at the Munich Security Council in February, raised the case of another person convicted of breaching Bournemouth’s PSPO: Adam Smith-Connor, a British physiotherapist and former soldier, whose prosecution, Vance said, represented the UK’s “backslide away from conscience rights”.
“When we heard the US administration mention these protesters and our little clinic, little old us. We found it quite funny,” said the clinic manager, Adele Warton, speaking from her office in a largely secluded white brick building at the intersection of three residential roads.
In March, US scrutiny ramped up, and President Trump sent a team of US officials to meet British-based pro-life activists as part of a fact-finding mission assessing the state of freedom of speech in the UK and Europe.
BPAS staff believe JD Vance’s intervention is distracting focus from the women who need their help
PETER ZAY/ANADOLU/GETTY IMAGES
In April, after a judge sentenced Tossici-Bolt to a conditional discharge and ordered her to pay £20,000 in costs by this weekend, the US State Department’s bureau of democracy, human rights and labour said it was “disappointed”. Legal counsel for Smith-Connor and Tossici-Bolt was provided by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an American Christian legal advocacy group which also supported pro-lifer Isabel Vaughan-Spruce when she was arrested, and later compensated by police, for praying outside an abortion clinic in Birmingham in 2022.
ADF confirmed this weekend that the £20,000 fine had been covered by crowdfunding by supporters of Tossici-Bolt following the “global attention” on her case.
Smith-Connor said he was “greateful” to Vance for showing concern that he had been “criminalised” for praying for just three minutes” following a personal experience of abortion.
• Anti-abortion campaigner in free speech row backed by US pressure group
For Barton, the transatlantic attention on the pro-life versus pro-choice debate in the UK is concerning because it may embolden anti-abortionists who object to the existence of buffer zone laws.
She said: “This American connection could get bigger and stronger, it absolutely could. Meanwhile, we feel like sitting ducks, waiting for something to happen that makes the police take us seriously.”
Though all 24 incidents were reported to the police, there has been no further action, Warton said. It is unclear to staff who is behind them. Dorset police were approached for comment.
Small wooden crosses were planted in the area of the clinic, apparently to evoke children’s graves
BPAS, the charity that funds the clinic, has covered the cost of damage to most of the cars, as high as £1,500 for one staff member. The clinic has about 40 staff including managers, counsellors, doctors, nurses and cleaners.
There have been no infringements of the Bournemouth PSPO since Tossici-Bolt’s conviction, Warton said, even though the trial was held during the 40 Days for Life period, a pro-life campaign started in Texas involving non-stop prayer outside clinics.
Instead, staff say they have noticed individuals who have protested outside the clinic before gathering on the green opposite the clinic, inside the PSPO zone, for purposes other than protest, such as holding celebrations for Easter and VE Day.
An aerial view of the clinic; pins indicate where cars have been targeted and a yellow line borders the area covered by CCTV
BEN STEVENS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
Over the years, staff say they have been harassed by a man dressed as a monk and others who have expressed wishes that staff die of cancer. Caroline Brooks, 61, a support service co-ordinator who has worked at the clinic for almost 30 years, has seven folders with more than 500 complaints made by staff and patients about protesters between 2016 and 2022.
Brooks said she feels that the anti-abortion movement in the UK, particularly among students, is gaining momentum. “I think the trouble is that when I started here, we had nurses that had worked in the NHS before the 1967 Abortion Act, legalising abortion under specific circumstances, came into effect. They had horrendous stories of backstreet abortions. Because we’ve moved on from that time, people don’t tell those stories any more, but the bottom line is that women will have abortions whether there’s a safe service to access or not.”