Abortion is about...

by   Carol Everett                                                                                                                                               Vol. V, No. 1 January 1992

I had an abortion in 1973 because a third child was not convenient. In an attempt to resolve my inner conflict with that decision, I became involved with the abortion industry in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas area. For over six years, each time I sold another abortion, I rejustified my own decision.

I was involved in over 35,000 abortions, and the last two years I was owner/operator of two clinics. My compensation for the daily operation of the clinics was $25 for each abortion. The last month in the abortion industry, our clinic did 545 abortions, which means my income that month was $13,625. I planned in 1983 to make $250-260,000, and when we expanded to five clinics, we would do 40,000, and I would make $1,000,000.

The state of Texas had no reporting requirement until 1986. We did not report any of our abortions – and certainly not our complications. The last 18 months I was involved in the abortion industry we had one major complication out of each 500 abortions. My definition of a "complication" is death, hysterectomy, colostomy, or urinary tract repair. Again, not one of our complications was reported to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia, or to the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Not one of those complications ever appeared in the newspaper, and not one lawsuit was filed.

Unfortunately, the killing of women still goes on inside the abortion industry today. I present a copy of a death certificate from an abortion death on April 27,1990. This 28 year old mother of a 10 year old, 8 year old, and a pre-schooler, divorced, and pregnant for the fourth time, had her abortion by 8:30 a.m. and was discharged. She called the clinic back to report heavy bleeding. She was told not to be concerned, and she was dead by 6:01 p.m. the same day. The description for cause of death on her death certificate read, "internal hemorrhage with major blood loss, uterine laceration from an abortion." Women still die from legal abortion.

Out of those 35,000 abortions, not one was for the health or life of the mother. All were for the convenience of the mother: birth control abortions.

The recovery room was strategic because we knew over 40 percent of these women could be resold an abortion. It was important to be friendly with the woman because we clearly knew she would be telling her friends how great we were, and coming back for another abortion. Birth control was dispensed free, with no additional medical workup until the woman's two-week checkup. The checkup was free, so we could be certain she was not still pregnant, the pap smear for pills was $ 10.

Actually, we sold abortions by finding out the reason the woman wanted not to be pregnant, and then explaining how abortion would "take care of her problem." For instance, with minors we regularly said, "Wouldn't your parents kill you if they found out you're pregnant?" Of course, the frightened teenager always said, "Yes." If she talked about having the baby, we always said, "Yes, but what will your parents say?" And she moved toward an abortion again.

When asked if it was a baby, we always said it was a "glob of tissue," a "blood clot," or "a piece of tissue." Even though we held those babies' broken bodies in our hands, we never told the mother it was a baby, formed by the time she knew she was pregnant, heart beating 18 days after conception – because then, she would not have had an abortion. I now think how we cheapened women by not giving them the true facts. Yes, I told myself I was helping women.

Abortion is not about choice, rights, rape, or incest. Abortion is about money. Doctors could do ten to twelve first-trimester abortions per hour times $75 (minimum). That equals $750 to $900 per hour. We did not keep records of the doctors' income, but paid them in cash at the end of the day without a 1099 or W-2 form at the end of the year. Reporting of income to the Internal Revenue Service was left entirely to the discretion of the abortionist.

Yes, abortion is about money. Abortion is a skillfully marketed product sold to a woman at a crisis time in her life. She buys the product, finds it defective, wants to return it for a refund, but it's too late – her baby is dead.

[Above is reprinted from Coral Ridge Ministry's newsletter Impact, January 1992.]