“This battle is just so vicious and the evil is so powerful and so brutal that I really think God is doing everything he can…I just don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”

When Anne Lotierzo spoke these words, she wasn’t referring to the war in Afghanistan, she was talking about the abortion rights battle raging in America. With more than 4,000 pro-life crisis pregnancy centers versus 850 abortion clinics estimated to be in the states, ground zero may be found at an otherwise sleepy intersection at 12th and Delaware Avenue in Fort Pierce, Fla.

And filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady put viewers in the middle of the ferocious conflict with their latest documentary, “12th & Delaware,” which is airing all this month on HBO.

On one corner stands A Woman’s World, an abortion clinic, and directly across the street is the Pregnancy Care Center, an ambiguously named pro-life site committed to steering women away from the clinic.

Ewing said she and Grady attempted to give a fly-on-the wall view of the “ideological trench warfare” that takes place at the crossroads every day. It is not just a battle between the two parties, she said, but an emotional struggle for expecting mothers who find themselves in the throws of a life changing decision.

“The film became a chronicle of the raging battle occurring between two neighbors locked in a bitter personal and ideological struggle,” Grady said. “We had to confront the very difficult task of cutting through the personal gripes of the protagonists and portraying as fairly as possible the daily realities of both sides of the street.”

In the film, pro-life volunteers offer a terrifying portrayal of abortion to their clients. They instill fear and invoke the moral consequence. Pregnant women arrive to the abortion clinic and are met with signs with anti-abortion slogans and pictures of bloody fetuses, as protesters claim to speak for unborn children.

They strategize and scheme, sometimes disingenuously. In a number of instances they distribute literature that claims abortions cause cancer, and even encourage women to view graphic videos of the procedure. They also offer free ultrasounds on the idea that if embryos can be seen, and heartbeats heard, a woman’s decision can be swayed. In some cases, they are shown misleading women about the number of weeks they have been pregnant.

“They look at this as a war,” Ewing said. “They will use whatever tools they have…For pro-lifers this work is their life. They think that abortion is murder and that drives them every day to get up. It is their social life. I have never seen a group of people so dedicated. For them they believe it’s the most important thing they can do with their lives. It’s their number one cause.”

The abortion clinic — however immoral in some eyes — attempts to give the women a right to chose and consult with their clients to ensure their decision is final.

Ewing and Grady received unequivocal access to both the abortion clinic and the crisis pregnancy center, but only after hard work and determination. The duo settled on the location after contacting more than 100 facilities on both sides of the debate.

In their research, the co-directors found that many crisis pregnancy centers were set up directly across the street from abortion clinics. “That’s part of their allure,” Ewing said.

But 12th and Delaware Avenue was unique. “This location was truly cinematic,” Ewing added. “It all sort of came together on this street corner. We knew when we saw it that it had the makings of a powerful film.”

They then had the task of convincing both the pregnancy center and the abortion clinic to let them film, sit in on consultations, and conduct interviews with staff members.

They had to think long and hard, Ewing said, but “were both very anxious to tell their story because there’s been a standoff on this corner for so many years.”

And while much of this insidious war has just been vocal, Ewing and Grady were able to film in the same year abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his church. This, Ewing said, underscores the real safety hazards that face many abortion doctors.

In the film, workers at A Woman’s World are shown in fear for their doctors’ lives, and go to the extent of picking them up from undisclosed locations on each work day, then placing a white sheets over them to hide their identities.

Although this debate has raged for decades, the filmmakers see their work as timely; according to a recently-released Gallup poll, more Americans today identify themselves as pro-life than pro-choice, for the first time since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.

Two years ago, when the pair began shooting the film, Ewing “thought that the younger women would be more decisive about what they wanted. I thought that younger women had come to terms with the abortion issue,” she said. “What I realized is that women still feel very much ashamed and stigmatized for choosing abortion. I saw that over and over again. I felt guilty. I also found that women in their 50s and 60s felt more open to talking about abortion than those in their 20s or 30s. It seems that the culture has shifted, where women are sweeping this issue under the rug again and are afraid to talk about it.”