At 6:45 a.m., the old pawnshops and motels of Granite City, Ill., look like a movie set for a ghost town. The Hope Clinic parking lot is deserted, too, the only sound the murmur of Hail Marys from a woman kneeling on the sidewalk, rosary beads twined in tense fingers. Her husband stands next to her, his back arrow-straight, holding a large painting of the Blessed Virgin. They pray without pausing, almost without breathing, and their litany continues unbroken a half-hour later, when a huge banana-colored RV pulls up to the curb behind them. A blond woman hops out and starts unpacking signboards of aborted fetuses, and three little girls scramble out behind her, propping up bloody signs taller than they are. "Keep putting them out, girls. Make sure they don't touch the grass," instructs Angela Michael, opening her Bible. The first cars are pulling into the lot, and when a young woman gets out of one and walks toward the clinic door, the air crackles with urgency. "Mom, could we please talk to you before you go in there?" calls Angela. "There's... More >>>