A disturbing video has emerged out of Britain of the country’s thought police in action, CBN reports.

Alliance Defending Freedom UK (ADF-UK), a legal non-profit dedicated to preserving religious freedom in the United Kingdom, released the video of a police officer questioning Isabel Vaughan-Spruce who standing silently near an abortion clinic in Birmingham on Oct. 18.

Vaughan-Spruce, a known pro-life activist, was standing within a buffer zone that the courts have put around the clinic preventing people from protesting abortions.

ADF-UK noted that it is not illegal for anyone to walk through or stand within the buffer zone. They just can’t protest abortions.

A police officer approached Vaughan-Spruce as she was standing within the zone and began questioning what the pro-life activist was doing. The officer asked specifically if she was silently praying in her mind for ‘unborn children?’

The police officer believed that praying silently in your mind for women seeking an abortion would be a violation of the buffer zone protest zone.

Another individual who was with Vaughan-Spruce videoed the encounter. This individual also received a warning for allegedly thinking bad thoughts while videoing.

Though the police officer issued a ticket to Vaughan-Spruce, the Birmingham council later revoked it stating it would serve instead as a warning, and that Vaughan-Spruce would be ticketed if she dared to think bad thoughts within the zone again.

Previous attempts to stop Vaughan-Spruce from standing silently within the zone have been kicked out by the courts. This undoubtedly played a role in the council’s decision to revoke the ticket, but it is difficult to know what the council was thinking.

“It’s not for authorities to determine the thoughts in the privacy of an individual’s mind,” said ADF barrister and spokesperson Lorcàn Price in a statement about the incident. “Yet the PCSO officer saw fit to pry into the content of Isabel’s private prayers, and inquire as to her membership of a pro-life organization – neither of which are criminal acts.”

“The enforcement policy of police forces in relation to matters concerning speech and thought is now intolerably unclear. Legislators must now introduce concrete changes to law to safeguard the peaceful expressions of speech and free exercise of thought,” Price added.

The term ‘thought police’ comes from the dystopian novel, 1984, written by George Orwell in 1949. These were the secret police of the state of Oceania called Thinkpol whose job was to root out and arrest people for thinking bad or unapproved thoughts in the despotic regime.

This illegal thinking was officially referred to as a ‘thoughtcrime’ and police used a surveillance network that included hidden microphones, informers, and telescreens to find out what people were secretly thinking.

It was supposed to be a fictional novel describing a make-believe dystopian world.

READ: ‘To Fine Somebody for Their Thoughts Is Grossly Orwellian’: UK Police Target Praying Woman Again