It was intense and "emotions were jacked up," recalls Christine, a volunteer with Louisville Clinic Escorts who asked to be identified by only her first name. One day, she told VICE Impact, the protesters lined their children in front of a group of volunteers there to escort patients into the clinic, as if to lay their hands on them in prayer.

For a week in late July, scores of anti-abortion protesters with the conservative Christian group Operative Save America descended upon Louisville, Kentucky. Their goal? To shut down EMW Women's Surgical Center —or what they called "the last remaining abortion mill" in the state.

"The escorts turned their backs on them," she said. "That made Operation Save America so angry. They made vomit and spitting noises over the microphone, called us disgusting and dogs and animals, and said that we really hate children and that we want to murder children. It was such a performative thing that they were doing, It was almost like some weird avant-garde art show."

According to a recent report from the Abortion Care Network, independent abortion care providers like EMW perform about 60 percent of the abortion procedures in the country, making them vital in the women's reproductive health landscape. But their numbers are declining at an alarming rate—145 facilities have closed in the US since 2012.

"The instability of not knowing whether you're going to be able to stay open because of the constitutionality of a law is devastating to a small independent clinic."

Seven states in the US currently have just one remaining clinic. EMW is the last remaining abortion clinic in Kentucky, and earlier this year, Gov. Matt Bevin made it his aim to close it down. If he succeeds, Kentucky would be the first state without a single abortion clinic in operation, effectively banning the health service in the state.

Ernest Marshall, a physician and co-founder of EMW, told VICE News earlier this year that despite Kentucky being an anti-choice state, "there have always been plenty of pro-choice people [there]. It's never been smooth sailing. We were always threatened with obstructive laws, but we were never threatened with the possibility of closure."

Check out more videos from VICE:

At the heart of EMW's fight to stay open are licensing issues. Kentucky requires abortion providers have hospital and ambulance service agreements in order to stay open, an effective vehicle of anti-choice advocates. Earlier this year, the facility was threatened with a shutdown because they reportedly had the wrong signature on their documents. Because of last year's Supreme Court ruling in Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt —which found that abortion restrictions, commonly referred to as TRAP laws that are not medically justified or that impose a burden on women seeking abortions, are unconstitutional—EMW filed an emergency lawsuit against Kentucky. The case is set to go to trial in September.