NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Carrying a Bible or praying at a patient’s bedside inside Northern Ireland hospitals can be treated as an offense if it breaches local abortion laws, according to newly issued UK police guidance.
On 2 July, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (“PSNI”) provided a written response to the Policing Board of Northern Ireland clarifying the scope of the Abortion Services (Safe Access Areas) (Northern Ireland) Act and its impact on hospital and religious chaplains.
The law prohibits “influencing,” “obstructing or hindering access,” or “causing harassment, alarm or distress” to a protected person within 100 meters (about 328 feet) of an abortion facility.
Reading the Bible at the request of a patient or family in an abortion shelter may risk the chaplain being found to be in breach of Northern Ireland’s Safe Places Act. (Stock via Getty Images)
US NOTES ‘RELATED’ UK PROSECUTION OF PASTOR WHO PREACHED ON JOHN 3:16 NEAR A HOSPITAL.
The PSNI clarified that the law does not affect the “vast majority” of hospital chaplains or chaplains in their day-to-day work, unless their duties bring them into a secure access area.
However, the law does not “exempt” clergy or religious identity. Carrying Bibles, reading the Scriptures, consistent pastoral care, and praying with a patient during end-of-life care may be considered illegal if the activity is carried out in a secure environment and is recognized as likely to affect or distress a protected person nearby, the PSNI said. A visible or “passive” act of religion may be an offence, “even where no direct means or connection takes place,” the PSNI said.
The PSNI stressed that a religious person’s intention in carrying out this work does not protect them from liability under the law.
BIBLE VERSE LEADS TO THE COUNTRY OF EUROPE. GROWING CRACKDOWN THREATS OUR US-UK PRINCIPLES
“Defining behavior such as pastoral care, prayer or religion does not determine whether an offense has been committed,” the PSNI said in its guidance. “The test is not how one defines his conduct – whether that conduct, objectively and objectively assessed in its totality, influenced, hindered, or caused distress to the protected person, or was negligent in doing so.”
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said in new guidance that hospital chaplains and chaplains are at risk of being accused of committing a crime if they carry a Bible, or pray with patients or their families in an area that prohibits abortion. (Stock via Getty Images)
The directive comes after retired pastor Clive Johnston, 78, was convicted and fined $614 in May for preaching a John 3:16 sermon near an abortion hospital.
Johnston may be the first to be prosecuted under the law for preaching a sermon that did not mention abortion, according to the Christian Institute, a religious advocacy group, which supported his case.
GOP LAWMAKERS ASK SUPREME COURT TO STRENGTHEN FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTIONS FOR STREET PREACHERS
Reverend Jonathan Campbell of the Newbuildings Independent Methodist Church in Londonderry told Fox News Digital that the recent ruling against Johnston and the new guidance have left UK Christians unsure of how to hold a religious service in a hospital without breaking the law.
“It is unthinkable that the Bible, or clerical clothes, would be allowed in a hospital if someone finds it offensive,” he said. “The message of Christianity is one of hope and comfort for the sick, the worried and the grieving. It cannot be that in Northern Ireland, the representatives of the church cannot comfort those in need.”
A priest praying the rosary. (Nastco/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
He called on the UK government to “immediately clarify that Christians are always free to express their faith in hospital premises and elsewhere.”
In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, a PSNI spokesman said the police “do not seek police religion or official care.”
The spokesman added that although people retain the rights to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and freedom of speech,” those rights “are not absolute and must be limited to the rights and protections contained in the law, and the rights of others.
The abortion law requires police to check whether conduct in a protected area constitutes criminal conduct under the law, a spokesman said.
“This is an objective assessment. It is not determined solely by the presence of religious elements or the identity/role of the person involved,” the statement continued. “The guidance was issued to help officials to interpret and apply the Act consistently in the operational context where complaints may arise. It does not create new cases. It presents the law as enacted.”
Ciarán Kelly, director of The Christian Institute, said the law “is being interpreted in ways that threaten the normal Christian ministry within hospitals.”
“According to this guidance, a pastor who prays with parents mourning the loss of a child and then reads the famous words in Psalm 23 – Jehovah is my shepherd – can fall into the law,” he said. “Indeed, it seems that someone carrying a Bible in certain parts of a hospital could face a criminal investigation if someone thought it might influence a completely unrelated abortion decision.”
Retired pastor Clive Johnston speaks outside court on May 7, 2026, after being convicted of violating the Safe Access Zone with a sermon on John 3:16. (Christian Institute)
Kelly said that while he believes this was not the intent of lawmakers when they drafted the law, its vague wording has created “a very damaging effect.”
CLICK HERE FOR MORE NEWS AND CULTURE
“Patients do not lose the right to spiritual care because they are in the hospital where abortions are performed,” he continued. The very suggestion that praying in agreement or reading the Bible might be a crime should concern everyone who values basic freedom.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS PROGRAM
Johnston’s case follows other high-profile cases involving Christians persecuted under buffer zone laws in the UK, which the US State Department is scrutinizing.
“The United States is still monitoring a number of ‘buffer zone’ cases in the UK, as well as other investigative activities across Europe,” a State Department spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital. “The UK’s persecution of silent prayer represents not only a serious violation of the fundamental right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but also a departure from the shared principles that should underpin the US-UK relationship.”
