That makes the Pro-Life Union of Greater Philadelphia perhaps the single longest-standing regular outside observer of Gosnell's clinic, which was last inspected by state authorities in 1993 before a Feb. 18, 2010, raid on it by an FBI team going after what it thought was an illegal prescription mill uncovered the dire conditions at the abortion facility located on the same site. "Every Saturday morning," clinic neighbor Bill Baumann said in the Gosnell documentary 3801 Lancaster, "the priests and the antiabortionists were out front praying the rosary."

But just because Finnegan and her team would spend Saturdays praying outside the facility doesn't mean she ever got any sense of what went on there. "Were we aware of the specific and grave horror that was going on at the Gosnell facility? No," she said. Despite Pro-Life Union members' attempts to engage women going for appointments with Gosnell or at the Planned Parenthood facilities in the Philadelphia area that provide abortions (the majority of Planned Parenthood offices that serve the area don't), Finnegan's group never got clear information from the women about their experiences or any kind of comparative picture of the facilities.

And as far as she is concerned, every abortion clinic is a house of horrors, full stop, meaning that Gosnell's was no different: "What's happening at this abortion facility, it's happening at every abortion facility."



Nor did the group pull public (such as court) records of complaints against Gosnell, which might have allowed anti-abortion advocates to see the pattern state regulatory authorities were ignoring, despite repeated complaints from doctors and Gosnell's victims. "Groups like Operation Rescue have the manpower to investigate clinics. Most pro-life groups don't have that kind of manpower. We're there to offer women an alternative," she said. The problems with the clinic were "apparently known in the neighborhood, but I wouldn't necessarily know that."

Operation Rescue, the Kansas-based national anti-abortion group, keeps a list of every abortion clinic in the country, according to Senior Policy Adviser Cheryl Sullenger. And while she said that it does a great deal of work investigating abortion-providing facilities and filing third-party complaints against them, when it came to Gosnell, "He was kind of under the radar. In fact most of the pro-lifers didn't ever realize he was conducting the kind of business that he was." She blamed the fact that he conducted most of his pregnancy terminations late at night or on Sundays, and said Operation Rescue first became aware of his abuses "when the FBI raided his clinic." Added Sullenger, "We were aware of his clinic, we just didn't know what was going on there."



This enormous communications gap between the different communities of people who wanted for years to put Gosnell out of business is likely a result of the major cultural and values gap between anti-abortion activists and the poor minority women whose desperation Gosnell exploited. "The stigma against abortion creates this silence," said Charlotte Taft, director of the Abortion Care Network, on a Tuesday conference call arranged by RH Reality Check. It "makes women who go to clinics like this not blow their own whistle."