They come every morning from Wednesday through Saturday, with Jesus in their hearts and, according to Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP), hatred on their tongues. Some days, their numbers are small; there may be as few as one standing on the sidewalk, invoking the heat of hellfire. But other days, they come in pilgrim-esque droves.

On the third Saturday of every month, more than 100 people gather to decry the clinic they say is nothing less than a killing factory.

And that's the day the clinic cashes in.

Starting Oct. 1, PPSP will begin a new fundraising program, called "Pledge-a-Picket," in which donors promise to give a certain amount of money for every protester who visits their Locust Street headquarters. If a donor pledges $1 per protester (the minimum is 10 cents), and 100 protesters show up, the donor gives $100. The agency plans to set up a counter at the front entrance, so that protesters can see how much money their nemesis has made off of them.

PPSP could not provide figures for the amount of money pledged thus far. But the campaign will only run until Nov. 30, so the actual amount of money raised may not be that significant.

"This is really a public awareness plan," says PPSP president Dayle Steinberg. The idea, which is borrowed from other Planned Parenthood chapters, is that the clever gimmick will call attention to the protesters by, for instance, inspiring a City Paper article.

"We want to sort of expose their tactics of intimidation," Steinberg says. "They verbally attack our patients, and try to deny people their health care."

Steinberg is "quite sure" the public would disapprove of the protesters' tactics. As for the protesters themselves, she says she doesn't expect them to adjust their strategy: "I expect them to be pretty much oblivious to it."

Had you walked by the Planned Parenthood clinic this past Saturday morning, you would have seen a throng of about 100 people standing in front of a tree-lined alcove, heads bowed toward the brick building as if in supplication to it. Quietly, they recite the rosary over and over, without pause or variation. They say it hundreds of times, their collective voice filling the air like a cricket song.

All of the protesters are white, and are otherwise diverse in age, gender and dress. A few hold up signs about Jesus. The event, which begins with a Mass at St. John the Evangelist down the street, is somber, hypnotic and deeply disquieting.

Standing on the outskirts of the crowd are several police and Planned Parenthood escorts, volunteers charged with guiding patients past the protesters and comfortably into the clinic. The escorts wear yellow smocks and remain relatively quiet, as if out of respect for the strange ritual.

Though it would certainly be unpleasant to walk through this crowd, one would be hard-pressed to describe its behavior as "intimidation." One escort, who gives the name Janine, explains that the third-Saturday protesters are unique.

"The Catholics are pretty disciplined and rather calm," she says. "I get along with [them]. A few will shake my hand afterwards." She describes these Saturday gatherings as a comfortable "routine."

The general consensus here seems to be that the Pledge-a-Picket campaign will not break this equilibrium. It's not that the protesters will be oblivious to it, says a policeman. Rather, he thinks, "Their theory is if they turn one person away, they've done their job."

One protester offers a different explanation. A short, squat woman with gray-blond hair who has been coming here for 15 years holds up her rosary and declares, "This is a weapon."

She used the weapon, she claims, when her mother "had an incident like Terri Schiavo."

"But I didn't do what they told me to do," she says. "She died a natural death but she died at the hour of mercy."

This woman says she believes that if she and her brethren pray long and hard enough, the abortion clinic will go away. And this may be the real reason that Pledge-a-Picket will have little effect: As far as the protesters are concerned, Planned Parenthood can make all the money it wants. They trade in the currency of prayer.

Just before 9 a.m., the rosaries stop and the street falls silent. One of the protest's leaders, Father John McFadden of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Cheltenham, guides the crowd away from the site of worship and back to the church. As he walks, McFadden, a big man with a soft voice, listens to an explanation of the upcoming Pledge-a-Picket campaign. Then he nods, and shares his thoughts.

"Because of the killing nature of that organization," he says, "I'm not surprised in any way."