“It was like walking into a nightmare”

She chose Dr. Gosnell’s clinic because that was where women she knew went. But when she was led into a waiting room, she started having second thoughts.

“It was like walking into a nightmare,” she said. “Everyone was sedated, no one was making sense. People were slumped over and waiting in line like they were going into a soup kitchen.”

The clinic was smelly, in part from a dirty turtle tank in the lobby, but also from generally squalid conditions. The grand jury report said the clinic had blood on the floor, a stench of urine in the air and cat feces on the stairs when agents raided it.

“Semiconscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with blood-stained blankets,” the report said.