In an interview last month with Gary Cass on the “Defending a Christian Worldview” webcast, Operation Rescue’s Troy Newman outlined his group’s strategy of targeting individual abortion providers in order to shut off “the supply side of the abortion industry,” thereby cutting off “the Enemy’s ability to make war on the children.”

“Let’s be honest, we’ve passed hundreds and hundreds of bills, possibly thousands of bills in all 50 states and on the federal level, and in the end we do not have an abolition to abortion,” he said.

He told Cass that his group’s local-level agitation is what really works in cutting off access to abortion.

“The other side is always talking about access. They don’t want to talk about choice any more, they never use the A-word — abortion — now their buzzword is ‘women’s health care’ or ‘access,’” Newman told Cass.

He depicted his fight as a battle against Satan, or “the Enemy”: “And because what we’re doing and have done over the past decade or so is destroy, literally destroy, the Enemy’s ability to make war on the children by taking out the supply side of the abortion industry.”

It’s unclear how much impact Newman’s group actually has in shutting down clinics. For instance, in the history section of its website, Operation Rescue takes credit for a drop in the abortion rate for Kansas, which it said led to the closing of what was then the only abortion provider in Wichita. In fact, that coincided with a nationwide drop in abortions that reproductive health experts credit to improvements in contraceptives.