"Hair in a grey bob with a small gold cross around her neck, 64-year-old Livia Tossici-Bolt might seem an unlikely choice of a global cause célèbre," said Nicholas Pyke in the Daily Mail. But the activist has become the face of a transatlantic row over free speech after being convicted for breaching an abortion clinic "buffer zone" in 2023. Tossici-Bolt, who stood outside the Bournemouth clinic with a sign saying, "Here to talk, if you want", has been given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £20,000 in costs.
The Trump administration called it disappointing. And they're right, said Melanie McDonagh in The Spectator. Tossici-Bolt wasn't aggressive; all she did was respectfully offer an "alternative" opinion on abortion, as anyone in a free country is allowed to do. Not here in Britain, though. I saw footage of a community support officer asking another respectful protester, outside a Birmingham clinic, whether she was praying. That was the point at which I thought: the country is "going to hell".
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