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Can Bournemouth Police Handle the Reality of abortion? Why the Postponed David Skinner Case is so Important

Normally when you think about retirement, you think of relaxing cruises, gardening, grand child duties or perhaps an elongated visit to a sauna.

The threat of fines, bailiffs, raised blood pressure, or the torture of waiting for the British legal system to kick into gear, is far from the picturesque retirement brochure. Yet this is exactly how David Skinner’s retirement is panning out. The 79 year old pro-life activist, and Bournemouth resident is currently awaiting trial having had his court date postponed last Wednesday.

His crime - sending an email!

Mr Skinner is being charged under the Malicious Communications Act (1988) after he sent an email to the police requesting they “investigate the atrocity“ of abortion at the local abortion clinic. The email contains 7 graphic abortion images (3 sourced from CBR UK and affiliates), a link to the Abortion Reality video and over 60 more hyperlinks to various supplementary bits of evidence. These include: a video of a 24 week old baby in a neonatal unit having its first bath, another video of a maimed but forgiving abortion survivor from the USA, UK police dancing at pride parades (there is a link - I promise) and a set of moving videos and images depicting the parallels between our British abortion death cult and the Nazi atrocities, in particular the brave Germans who dared to stand against them.

For all of the hard effort that went into composing this email, it was not well received! Despite the fact that one assumes police stations handle distressing evidence all the time, on this occasion, two female staff - a temporary police inspector and a civil employee who works for the Police and Crime Commissioner - took offence and pressed charges. At his trial, likely due within the first three months of next year, prosecutors will have to prove that the email was “indecent or grossly offensive” and that it was his “purpose” to “cause distress and anxiety”. If found guilty he will have to pay a fine and around £650 in legal costs. If he refuses to pay, the jail bag he was instructed to pack before court last week may actually come in useful.

On announcement of his adjournment, fifteen of us - a mixture of lawyers, expert witnesses and supporters - squeezed into a 2 by 2.5 metre side room typical of a magistrates court. Michael Phillips, consultant to the Christian Legal Centre, briefed us on the road ahead. We listened, a few speeches were made, and a prayer was said. Ten minutes later it was a retirement sauna like no other, as supporters poured out the room gasping for air before making their way to a local cafe, where the legal team and Mr Skinner discussed the case.

Forty minutes later it was clear that the success or failure of Mr Skinner's case hinges on the scope of evidence that will be accepted. Whether the court will allow any of David’s 60 hyperlinks, or whether his expert witnesses will even be allowed to give evidence, is a question the jury is out on. Quite literally, for his case will be decided not by a jury but by a single district judge. Not just any district judge but Orla Austin (appointed in 2023), the same judge who recently found army veteran and physiotherapist Adam Smith Connor guilty of praying in his head!

We should, of course, hope nothing is excluded from this case and that the whole ugly affair is laid bare before a watching world. For as graphic and upsetting as the images are, they simply depict what happens in the British Pregnancy Advisory Service Clinic on Ophir Road. Government Abortion data shows that the clinic oversaw the killing of 771 babies in 2021 and 578 the following year. Around 50% of these were surgical abortion procedures for the simple (albeit brutal) reason, that their little heads at this stage are too big and bones too calcified, to fit through the cervix and therefore must be crushed.

The prosecution can and will argue that the images were not from the clinic, but what does this matter? The homeless person on the Crisis advert may not be homeless or may be a paid model, it doesn’t mean there aren’t homeless people who need help. They may also argue that late term abortions as depicted in the images, don’t take place in the clinic. On the one hand this is true, the clinic hasn’t conducted abortions on babies beyond 24 weeks. Yet that being said, they have conducted abortions on at least 2 babies killed after 20 weeks in the last 6 years.

On the other hand, all of this is entirely misleading. A child’s humanity is established at fertilisation not at an arbitrary point after that. The humanness of their appearance is not a marker of their moral value. Although, even if we were to concede this point, the clinic would still not have a leg to stand on. According to official records, 402 of the babies killed in 2021 were between 13-19 weeks gestation. The next year they killed 350 babies at this age. At 17 weeks these are pomegranate” sized babies, who can hear the music in the operating theatre moments before their untimely deaths. Clearly the clinic is well adept at killing them and handling their human remains. In order to prove this one simply needs to read the CQC followup report from February 2023.

It euphemistically states:

“At the previous inspection we found pregnancy remains were not always treated with respect. Pregnancy remains were collected into a shared vessel. Collecting several pregnancy remains in one receptacle separate from clinical waste was the default position…the service has made amendments to the pathway and policy for management of pregnancy remains. There were 4 pathways and 2 disposal logs in use to document how the pregnancy remains were collected”

Yet even if Mr Skinner's legal team is permitted the liberty to go into all of this (and I pray they are), his acquittal is by no means guaranteed. On the 4th May 2006, another pensioner - then 74 year old Ted Atkinson of Downham Market - was sentenced to 28 days in jail for sending a graphic abortion video to staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn. Even though the hospital was conducting abortions beyond 20 weeks in 2021, they still saw that Atkinson was sent to jail, fined, given an ASBO and in one final act of vengeance, struck off the hip replacement list. His crime? Daring to show hospital chief executive Ruth May, what was going on in her own hospital.

I’m sure Atkinson and Skinner (like all of us) can be strong headed, impulsive and disagreeable at times, and that these characteristics occasionally overflow into their activism. Yet this should not justify jail sentences or the denial of healthcare. Ultimately they are not guilty of one thing most of us are - inactivity. When faced with an injustice, they actually did something. Like it or not, this is where Mr Skinner’s parallels between us and Nazi Germany become extremely apt.

In his fateful/faithful email (you decide) Skinner writes:

“The police will say that the law is the law. I am afraid that argument did not do “law-abiding” Germans any good when they stood trial at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. Let’s remember, killing Jews in Germany during the Third Reich was legal. Likewise killing babies is also legal in Britain. But be warned; those German authorities who silenced those like Sophie Scholl and even high ranking German soldiers who attempted to expose the Nazism, did finally receive recompense for their wickedness at Nuremberg.”

Instead of investigating the “legal” activities inside Ophir Road clinic, the police have sought instead to silence the so-called “illegal” activities of whistle-blowers. Here lies the most compelling question that Mr Skinner’s case raises. When should the police investigate “legal” institutions or listen to people they deem to be acting “illegally”? The Nazis would say never, and the rest is history. But our police force is built on entirely different principles.

If Mr Skinner’s evidence is not excluded, one thing his defence is bound to mention is the Peelian principles. The code compiled in 1829 and attributed to Robert Peel, lays out multiple tenets of good policing that should, in theory, make us different from the gestapo. These include “policing by consent”, “absolutely, impartial service to law” and “maintaining at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police”. From the off Bournemouth Police have fallen foul of at least three of these principles. On consent: they have sought consent not from the public at large nor the human persons being killed, but a relatively small lobby of individuals and businesses who want to kill babies without the uncomfortable reminder that it’s wrong. On partiality: it required the digging of an American publication named Warhorn Media, to show that Yvonne Fenwick (one of the offended police staff who received Skinner’s email) was found “having a fabulous time” at Bournefree, the local LGBT+ pride event. It’s one thing pandering to public opinion, it’s another thing found dancing to its beat.

The police’s zeal to side with the zeitgeist has made it vulnerable to manipulation. Instead of impartially upholding the rights of a courageous veteran who has put life and limb on the line for his country, they are actively policing on behalf of a money-making abortion business (with combined income of over £367 million in 2024) enforcing stringent conditions on what can happen on public land outside of the clinic. In doing so they are being desperately short sighted and riding roughshod over the European Convention on Human Rights, Nuremberg and dare I say…the Magna Carta.

 

Screenshots from the Charity Commission income and outgoings of UK’s two largest abortion providers, BPAS and MSI

The buffer zone: The PSPO Around the Ophir Road abortion clinic is the size of 15 football pitches. Source: Bournemouth Council

As far as relational principles go, to convict Mr Skinner would be a step towards, not away from, the Third Reich.

High above the overflowing bin outside the courthouse, bolted into the concrete is the Poole crest. Below it reads the Latin words Ad Morem Villae De Poole. The words come from the 1568 town charter and mean "According to the Custom of the Town of Poole". Yet as we speak, one man appeals his criminal conviction for praying. Another awaits trial for trying to tell the police what is going on inside the very same clinic that may have inspired the first man to pray. Neither man is perfect, both are loved by God and trying to uphold the truth to a city that would do well to make it their custom to end the shedding of innocent blood, rather than punish those who are brave enough to expose it.

Mr Skinner's trial date is due to be announced on November 22nd. Updates on Adam Smith-Connor’s case can be found via the excellent March for Life UK coverage.