Women already are forced to run a gauntlet of literature, praying, yelling, disturbing, blown up graphic images, and often accusations of murder when they go to access a legal abortion.  Now, for the women in Maryland who want to use the clinic that Dr. Leroy Carhart is working from, that harassment is going to be intensely amplified.

Operation Rescue has rented the building across the street.

Via The Washington Post:

Two groups that oppose abortion rights have rented office space across a small Germantown parking lot from LeRoy Carhart, one of the few doctors in the country known to perform later-term abortions. 

Carhart opened his office late last year after coming from Nebraska, where a new law made it illegal to perform abortions after 20 weeks.

Operation Rescue and the Maryland Coalition for Life celebrated their new lease, saying in a statement that their priority is to be a “referral and resource center for women considering abortion (early or late-term) and for women who have already made that tragic and costly decision.” The space will also “be used as a place of prayer for pro-life supporters,” the groups said.

It sounds so innocent in the statement.  And if they were only going to stay in their space, and not “solicit” the women coming for abortions, it might be.  But they aren’t.

The new pro-life center will not be a place where protests and pickets take place, said Operation Rescue, but will focus on helping women and on prayer.

Nonetheless, they said hundreds of pro-life supporters will continue to maintain a peaceful presence on the public sidewalk where the two offices are located.

“This Center is going to have a profound impact on Germantown by offering women a life-affirming alternative directly across the parking lot from Carhart’s late-term abortion mill. The churches and the community of Germantown have really come together to make this a reality,” said Michael Martelli, Executive Director of Maryland Coalition for Life.

This is their “peaceful presence.”