RFI Senior Fellow Todd Huizinga wrote an article for The European Conservative titled, “Thought Police: Protecting the People from Prayer.” Huizinga discusses a disturbing trend in which governments, in their zeal to defend abortion at all costs, are attempting to criminalize silent thought – with serious implications for religious expression. He writes:

England and Wales are not alone in going to the very extreme to protect abortion. In Scotland, the parliament is considering a buffer zone law that is even more zealous than the English Public Order Act amendment. It, too, could well outlaw private thoughts, including silent prayer. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in the U.S., at least 20 pro-lifers have been convicted under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The Biden Administration is adding a felony conspiracy charge as well, in order to justify draconian prison sentences. One woman, a grandmother and bookstore owner from Michigan, faces combined sentences totaling more than twenty years for having blocked the entrances to abortion clinics in a non-violent manner.

It is no coincidence that extreme measures such as the attempt to police thought have arisen in connection to abortion. The ferocity of government attempts to preclude any action against abortion, even the invisible and inaudible act of silent prayer, bears witness to how self-evident the evil of abortion is. Anything that even alludes to its obvious vileness must be immediately stamped out. If anyone could even begin to think about it, a truth that must be buried would be exposed, namely that the ‘right to choose’ means the right to kill an unborn child. One can call it a foetus if one likes, but it remains an undeniable fact that the foetus in question is genetically a human being. In its very silence, prayer to the Father of all goodness brings out the stark reality that abortion clinics exist for an unspeakable purpose: killing innocent human beings in the earliest stages of life.

The new totalitarianism reaches beyond the abortion question. Under the sway of the mantra of diversity, equity, and inclusion, any type of religious expression could come under threat. Last October, the Canadian National Ministry of Defense directed military chaplains, out of a “commitment to diversity, inclusion, and the betterment of our chaplaincy program,” to avoid mentioning God or using religious language in public ceremonies on Remembrance Day, the annual commemoration of those who have died defending Canada. This resulted from an advisory panel report that suggested that traditional adherents of monotheistic religions are racist and homophobic. As organisations such as Aid to the Church in Need and the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) have documented, dechristianization and political correctness are threatening religious freedom throughout Western Europe and North America. It is time for us in the West to come to our senses. Let us draw on our rich Western heritage of democracy, freedom, human dignity, human rights—a heritage which is especially robust in the UK, a centuries-long model of democracy and the rule of law—and refuse to tolerate the incipient totalitarianism in our midst.

Read the full article: “Thought Police: Protecting the People from Prayer.”