The gray-bearded man looks old enough to be her grandfather, and he jabs the air to punctuate his disagreement. Jab, jab, jab.

It could be worse, 15-year-old Veronica thinks. He hasn’t told her to go to hell, or spat in her face or called her a nutjob.

This is Veronica’s first anti-abortion protest of the day, here on Los Angeles’s Venice boardwalk on a hazy June morning. One of the teens with Veronica shouts into a bullhorn: “You’re killing my generation!” Nearby, hip-hop dancers blare Grand Master Flash for the tourists, and South Koreans sing Christian pop on a stage.

The man tells her she can’t possibly fathom the responsibility of parenthood. Veronica retorts that teens shame their peers who get pregnant. “It shouldn’t be like that,” she says. She’s got a ball cap on backwards, and her bangs fall in her eyes as she talks.

The camp welcomes anti-abortion activists age 13 and up. Photograph: Nicole Knight Shine

Today is day five of a 10-day camp considered one of the oldest training grounds in the country for pro-life activists aged 13 and up. They’re a pimple-faced army for life, afire with anti-abortion fervor, and drilled in everything from how to write a press release to how not to get arrested. Camp classes include Five Bad Ways to Argue about Abortion, The Abortion Industry, and Knowing Your Rights, a first amendment primer.

When asked, Veronica will tell you she’s a pro-life feminist, “and by that I mean equal rights for unborn women and women who have already been born”.

Camp co-founder Jeff White explains: “It’s getting them to a place where they’re not afraid to take a stand.” He helped launch the organization nearly two decades ago as an anti-abortion twist on civil rights-era activism, like sit-ins and bus strikes.

Last year’s camp attracted nearly 90 campers, but the program was scaled back this year to a more manageable 70 or so. Mostly Catholic or evangelical Christians, the young activists come from as far away as Mexico, but the majority hail from California. Each night, they fall asleep in a budget motel a block from a southern California theme park. Each day, vans carry them to locales as disparate as a Long Beach family planning clinic, or a Hollywood movie premiere.

Veronica talks to a man who disagrees with her views. Photograph: Nicole Knight Shine

Before every protest, a few teens are tapped as “event leaders” and “police liaisons”, with adults at the ready if campers encounter trouble. Veronica, who celebrated her 15th birthday three days ago, is an event leader at today’s “die-in” on the Venice boardwalk.

A few dozen campers lie on the gum-stamped boardwalk, outlined in yellow chalk – like a crime scene – and draped with red fabric, to represent the blood of unborn babies. It’s a teenage tableau of a conflict playing out across the country. Abortion remains legal, but there’s a widening gap over how that looks in the Texas flatlands versus a coastal metropolis. These teens are being trained to enter that fray.

“People do change their mind,” Veronica affirms.

Veronica lives in a village east of the San Francisco bay. She’s part Japanese and Irish, the child of a former professional dart player and deli owner, and one-half of a girl band. Her goals: end abortion and perform on Broadway, in that order. Her family is among a tight-knit group of anti-abortion activists, which is how she and many teens come to the camp. Some attend year after year.

“True loving compassion to those girls,” Veronica tells the gray-bearded man, “true equality to those girls would be to go up to them, help them, support them through their pregnancy.”

‘No one wants to talk about this kind of stuff’

Sofia Vergara has flipped off Veronica.

The campers huddle around Veronica, eating peperoni pizza as she recounts what happened. Veronica’s boyfriend, Nathaniel, who is 16, sits next to her. He is sandy-haired, quiet.

A few hours earlier, the campers had joined throngs of fans on Hollywood Boulevard at the red-carpet premiere of Channing Tatum’s latest Magic Mike movie. The campers were there to register their disapproval for what they see as Vergara’s disregard for her unborn babies. Vergara, who is locked in a highly publicized legal battle with her ex-fiance over two frozen embryos, was stepping on to the red carpet alongside her current fiance.

They brandished signs that said: “Sofia: unfreeze your daughters. Unfreeze your heart.” (Vergara’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.)

“And a car drives up. And it’s her,” Veronica says of the Modern Family star. “And at first she’s like looking at us, like we’re a joke.”

Veronica gestures with a slice of pizza as she describes Vergara.

“I was making eye contact with her. And then she started getting angry and she flipped me off. And I just looked at her like: ‘OK, if that’s how you want to handle it.’”

At camp, Veronica has learned that making people feel off-kilter, or even upset, is often necessary, “especially in Hollywood, where they just want to be in their fantasy land, where everything is totally fine”, Veronica explains. “No one wants to talk about this kind of stuff.”

‘Chalk and awe’

“OK, so no one on the driveways,” says today’s event leader, a minor whose parents have asked that her name not be used. “No one on the grass. We have to stay on the sidewalks.”

It’s day six of camp. Dozens of campers are on the way to the Beverlywood home of an OB-GYN who performs abortions.

“No bullhorns?” Isabella, a 14-year-old camper, asks.

It’s a sunless morning on the leafy street where the doctor lives. A miniature American flag flies in a pot of geraniums by the doctor’s front door.

The campers unload shoulder-high signs with pictures of infants, embryos and aborted fetuses. They fan out on the sidewalks around the doctor’s home and break out into a chant.

“Your neighbor,” campers on one side of the street shout.

“Is a killer,” campers on the other side respond.

A couple of campers shout into bullhorns and the noise sets off the alarm of an old Toyota Land Cruiser. A dog can be heard barking inside the doctor’s home. The windows are dark.

The campers continue chanting.

A man in a suit and yarmulke quickly pushes a stroller past the campers. A woman in yoga pants comes out of her home a few doors down and entreats the campers: “This is our Sabbath. Can’t you respect that?”

“Come pray with us,” one of the camp leaders replies.

Chalk on the sidewalk reads: ‘Babies are murdered here.’ Photograph: Nicole Knight Shine

Los Angeles police roll up in three squad cars and a patrol van. They instruct the campers to stop using the bullhorns, but otherwise simply watch. The sidewalks are public property and the campers are acting within their rights.

Veronica gathers campers around her and points down the street, away from the police, where the campers are to begin “chalk and awe”. In pastel pink, yellow and blue chalk, the campers write on the sidewalks and street: “Stop Killing Babies” and “Abortion Hurts Women”. They draw large arrows that point to the doctor’s home, and write “Baby Killer” and “Murderer”. Few of them realize that “shock and awe” was the term used for the Bush administration’s bombardment of Baghdad.

More neighbors are outside now. Two women hose the words off the sidewalk in front of their homes. “Please don’t write here,” says one woman, who is elderly with bobbed white hair.

The campers don’t stop, upsetting the woman. “You don’t listen,” she says. “You don’t know how to listen.” Her voice rises. “You just scream!” She sprays the campers.

It’s time to leave. Veronica helps round up the campmates. They hurry back to the vans. The neighbors are chanting now: “Shame, shame, shame.”