ACUTV proudly presents
On Campus with your host, ACU
vice president and dean of campus life,
Dr. Gary McCaleb.
Here's Gary.
The topic of abortion is a very
emotionally charged and controversial
issue in our society today,
and so up front today, I think I should
say that the discussion during this hour
will be on that subject.
There is no attempt being made to be
sensational about any of this, but there
will be an attempt to truly discuss
the issue in very frank and open
terms. And we are pleased to have with us
today Carol Everett.
Carol, thank you for being with us.
And you are someone who has had
a very personal experience and
a very close
perspective on
the issue that we're talking about today
of abortion
in order for us to get more into the
discussion as we move along,
I think it's appropriate for us to
understand your perspective.
First, could you give us
a little bit of your own personal
experience in
both the clinics in
which you have been involved in
and how that began with
you?
It actually started right after Roe
versus Wade, January the 22nd, 1973.
Remember, we were told abortion was a
safe, simple, legal, no
problems.
The procedure that was just going to end
a problem, pregnancy.
And two weeks later, I found myself
pregnant.
I was married and I had two children,
by all means. I should have been thrilled
to death that I was pregnant, but
it wasn't convenient.
We didn't want another child.
We didn't plan another child.
We weren't relishing the idea of suddenly
carrying diaper bags again in two a.m.
feedings.
And after all, abortion was supposed to
be so safe and so easy.
And so my husband and I decided we would
just have an abortion.
Now, it wasn't legal in the state of
Texas. However, when I called my doctor
to talk to him about abortion, he said
there weren't any problems.
He said he did them all the time.
And yes, what I needed to do was
check into the hospital with my husband's
urine because they did a pregnancy test
on urine.
The pregnancy test would be negative.
He would call it a day and say in my
insurance would pay for it.
It was so easy, so simple.
And we had the abortion.
Now, literally, the moment I woke from
that abortion, the first thought I had
was, I've killed my baby.
But you don't call someone and share
that. You've killed your baby, you've had
an abortion and you're depressed.
And so I went home to discuss it with my
partner and this my husband.
But he wasn't having those same problems
at that time.
And so his feeling was, forget it, we've
done the best we can.
I couldn't verbalize my anger at him, so
I acted it out. I had an affair
and very quickly that ruined that
relationship.
And then I became involved in alcohol
abuse, just getting drunk one day a month
and drug abuse, legal drugs.
But drug abuse, my
life just started this downhill
slide. Not only my life,
the baby was dead.
My husband and I, our marriage
was destroyed and the two children were
certainly compromised by that.
In an attempt to justify this abortion,
I became involved in the abortion
industry because each time I sold
an abortion to another woman, I could
justify my own.
You explain what you mean by selling an
abortion to another woman?
Well, one of the problems, one of the
big misconceptions about abortion
is people think women choose
abortion.
Women don't choose abortion.
Women are sold an abortion.
At a very crisis time in their life
as the simple, easy answer,
it is not a choice
women make.
It's a marketed product.
And you had you had accepted this
role now as a as a job.
Is that right? Yes.
When you said you were selling abortions,
you were actually working as a
the term used was counselor, wasn't
it? Well, actually, I was in charge of
two abortion clinics.
You were in charge of it, but in the role
of a counselor
to people, to women at this crisis
time in their life,
you and other people who have been in
that role, what to what extent
did you find yourself being a counselor
in the full meaning of that word?
I wasn't a counselor.
I was a salesperson.
I just sold abortions.
I developed the marketing marketing
techniques for selling those abortions.
That's all I did.
It sounded like we were counseling, but
all we were doing was plain and simple
selling.
Now, explain the
the degree to which that particular role
and begin to expand.
You mentioned you at one time,
then became a manager.
And what role were you as in
these two clinics?
I was actually directing those
clinics, the director, the administrator,
whatever you want to call it.
But I was in charge of the total
operation of those clinics.
And as I became involved in the business,
my initial intent had been to help
that woman. We concentrated on helping
this woman with this problem pregnancy
and how much better her life was going to
be when she had this abortion.
But what I saw as I became embroiled
in this industry, and it is the largest
uncontrolled industry in this nation,
was that it was a for profit business.
I watched the man I work for.
I go from 25000 a year to one hundred
and twenty five thousand a year profit
in those two clinics.
That extra 100000 was directly a
result of my new marketing techniques,
and I wanted part of that money.
And so when you saw the amount of money
that was involved and you made another
decision?
Oh, yes, I was involved in
the greed.
I wanted some of that money.
And as a result, I asked him for an
equity interest in his business, which he
declined.
And I decided to open my own abortion
clinics.
I went out, placed my YellowPages
advertising 250000
dollars a year in that budget, and
I plan to open my abortion clinic
the month the YellowPages was
distributed.
And I did the first month
we did 45 abortions, 65 eighty
five.
And the last month I was there in July
of 1983, we did 545
abortions.
Now, I know you're wondering why I
remember how many abortions we did.
It's because I was paid per abortion.
I only made money if we did an abortion
and I made twenty five dollars for each
abortion.
So if you multiply five hundred and forty
five times twenty five, I put thirteen
thousand six hundred and twenty five
dollars in my pocket that month.
And that was one month.
That was one month. But we had bigger
plans in 1993.
I did plan to make two hundred and fifty
260000, but in 1984
we would have five abortion clinics open.
We were going to be the McDonald's of the
abortion industry. We were going to have
our central clinic right in the middle of
Dallas for satellite clinics around.
It would bring them in from a five state
area. If we couldn't do them in the
satellite clinics would send them into
the central clinic and we could do them
all.
When you say the McDonald's of the
abortion industry, that really has
the connotation of a mass produced
approach to things, is that what
what was really happening just to kind of
a mass production approach?
Oh, yes, because you've got
to satisfy everyone.
You must satisfy your doctor and you must
satisfy your patient in the way to do
that. Is it to accommodate both of
them as quickly as possible, get as many
patients to the doctor as he can handle,
get that abortion done on that
girl and get her out, get her in and out
as fast as possible.
It is a male
now in the process.
You now have had several years to look
back on it and say you've got
the perspective of time,
this is not something that just happened
yesterday.
Now, this is something that some years
have gone by at
the particular time we find
ourselves today.
How representative do you
find those experiences of being?
What is still going on today?
I believe it's still going on today.
As a matter of fact, we're seeing that
it's still going on today through the
victims, the second victim of that
abortion, the mother who goes in that
clinic and comes out to tell us the true
story of what happens.
It's still going on.
Did you, in the haste
to accomplish as many abortions
as possible in a day's time,
did you ever see
what might be called unnecessary
or at least unwise risk being taken
with the life or the health of the
women who were coming in?
Oh, sure.
There were many abortions that were done,
first of all, on non pregnant women.
And that was not indicated medically.
It was just for grade.
Excuse me, but let's stop on it for a
minute. Now, how would that be
accomplished?
What was what was the
how could that be explained?
Now, remember, this woman thinks she's
pregnant. She's called she's been
sold this abortion on the telephone.
She comes in presenting, thinking she's
pregnant. Now, her mind has said she's
pregnant. So when her pregnancy test
is not positive, the two minute pregnancy
test, the sales technique technique
goes something like this.
You know, this test is not sensitive
enough to pick up a very early pregnancy.
And since you could still be pregnant,
why don't we do this other test?
To be sure, so you won't have to be
concerned.
Will they take her back to do a sonogram?
A sonogram looks in a woman's abdomen,
shows everything that's in there, but a
uterus will show up pregnant or not.
So they put this girl woman on
the table, get a view on the sonogram
that looks good, lock it in place and
then flip the screen around and say,
see there, there it is.
You're pregnant.
Now, remember, this girl doesn't read
sonograms every day for a living.
She doesn't know a non nonpregnant uterus
from a pregnant uterus.
And this is the expert saying, there it
is, you're pregnant.
And she buys she thinks
she's pregnant.
So the next question is, got your money.
Come on, let's do it today.
Now you're going to say, how do they do
it? Well, the uterus is a muscle
and the cervix
is the mouth of the womb.
Now, the moment a woman becomes pregnant,
the cervix softens so it's easier
to die. But a non pregnant uterus is a
hard, tight little not so
the chances of injuring that cervix
during dilation are far greater when the
woman's not actually pregnant, not
counting the fact that they get in the
uterus and they have to prove, at least
to the nurse, that they did an abortion.
They have to have tissue, they have to
have a specimen.
So they scrape out more of the lining of
the uterus.
So the chances for sterility are far
greater in those women who were not
actually pregnant, not even counting the
fact that they must live as opposed to
forty women for the remainder of their
lives thinking they actually killed her
baby.
So.
You have just described a situation which
enhances the damage
that could have been done physically as
well as emotionally, but also is based
upon deceit.
Oh, yes.
So the presence of professionalism
as far as honesty
in even what is going on has been
compromised to a degree, it seems,
in those situations.
Oh, there's no question.
And all the way through the abortion
clinic, this happens. For instance, they
ask the counselor, is it a baby?
Every woman asks this question, is it
a baby?
And each abortion clinic calls it
something different, either a blob of
tissue, a product of conception or a
blood clot in our clinics.
We call it a blood clot.
And we said, oh, no, it's just a blood
clot. Nothing to it.
That's it.
Now, the truth is that it's six
weeks. These little babies have arms,
legs, hands, feet.
Every organ is present.
You can even tell what sex it is.
It's a little heart starts beating three
days after the mother misses her first
period. Eighteen days after conception,
how many women do you think would have an
abortion if they said, yes, it's about
this big and gave the fetal development?
Not many, so they have to lie
to them.
Could you describe the process
that occurs when there is, in fact,
the little baby in there as far as
as what is an abortion?
What do they do?
They're actually three different types of
abortions being done in the United States
today commonly.
And the most common method is the vacuum
suction method.
And that is where the uterus is.
It's done twelve weeks and under the
uterus is dilated to the point that the
cannula will
be can be inserted into the uterus.
Now, the cannula is an instrument about
so long it was actually designed
for abortions.
This cut down on the number of
instruments that an abortionist had to
use before this instrument.
They had to go in and scrape the baby
off the wall of the uterus and then use
an instrument to pull the baby out piece
by piece. Not anymore.
This little cannula is from this big to
this big, depending on how far the woman
is advanced into her pregnancy.
The edges are a little short, sharp
knife like edges, and they pull the baby
off the wall of the mother's uterus.
And simultaneously the baby is sucked
through this tube piece by piece by
piece.
The doctor only has to use one instrument
and it's over very quickly
now and second and third trimester
abortions. And, you know, abortion is
legal all the way through pregnancy,
except in Texas and Texas
in the third trimester in the seventh,
eighth and ninth months says
abortion cannot be done.
However, we still believe they're doing
them, but they don't call it that.
If they come in for a second or third
trimester abortion, they do the DNA
method, the dilation and evacuation.
Now, the baby's very big at this point
and the doctor uses big forceps that
looked like this. He goes inside the
uterus and crushes the baby inside the
uterus. No live births,
pulls the pieces out, puts it back
together. To be sure, he didn't leave
anything inside because she'll have
an infection and then goes home.
Now they're getting away from that
technique again and they're going back to
the sailin in prostaglandin type methods,
although not in this area yet that we're
aware of.
But this is the same second and third
trimester abortion.
And, you know, the baby is surrounded by
water in its mother's uterus.
They take a syringe, remove part of the
fluid surrounding the baby and inject
silane or prostaglandin back in
the baby. Drinks are Embry's
that fluid for it's born.
Now, this baby drinks this drug.
Whichever one they use, it suffocates
the baby and the baby dies,
thrashing about in its mother's uterus so
the mother can feel it while it's dying
and she goes into labor and
delivers the baby.
But there are two problems with this sort
of delivery.
The delivery in itself.
The mother has to experience it.
And many times these babies are born
without the help of a nurse or a doctor.
So the woman has to deliberate and
then the problem with live births.
But now they've gone back to this method
simply because they have found that they
can take this little baby's body, freeze
it, put it in a Styrofoam container, ship
them to labs strategically placed
around the United States.
Now, they can't sell the organs,
but they can attach service charges
and they can use their little brains,
their pay increase, their labor, their
skin for burn victims.
And they have found a market for their
product.
And to take
a break for just a minute.
When we come back, there are some other
areas we obviously still need to talk
about. One is the question of the
decision that you made to get out of this
industry and leave it behind.
And there's a story there and then
some other related experiences
and perceptions that you have.
We'll be back and continue to visit with
Carol Everett in just a minute.
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It's Radio Worth every minute.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Carol Everett.
There's an obvious question, and that is
that after you had been in this business
and you had gotten apparently a very
successful business set up and
what the future was even looking better,
why would you suddenly
decide to walk away from it and leave it
behind, as you did
through a very strange set of
circumstances?
A man came into our clinic to solve some
problems between the partners, and
we had to agree to meet with him for four
weeks in our age.
The second time I sat down with him, I
noticed something very different about
him. Literally this piece I couldn't
penetrate and I started asking him
questions.
I still don't know why, but I looked him
in the eye and said, Are you a preacher?
And he said, yes.
And I said, What in the world are you
doing in this situation?
And he said, God sent me.
I thought he was crazy.
I mean, I thought he was a nut.
I started telling him that I was a
Christian. I had a Bible in my desk
drawer in the abortion clinic.
I tied down all this money.
I prayed every day.
Of course, I didn't tell him.
I prayed there'd be no despite there
being no major complications, I prayed
there'd be a lot of abortions.
But I did.
And God was not going to let me live with
that lie.
And so he laid
out this plan of salvation.
He talked to me about God,
God being a loving God, but a just God.
How about God's grace?
And then he told me about Jesus Christ
and how he died for my sins on the cross.
And by the simple act of faith, I could
literally change my life.
Did I want to invite Jesus Christ to be
my lord and savior?
Now, remember, I thought I was a
Christian, and so I said yes, more
or less to placate this man, thinking
he'd go away.
And so we prayed that prayer.
And I went back in the abortion clinic.
But when I went back in the abortion
clinic, those girls weren't dancing in
the front door saying, I am so excited,
I'm finally pregnant, do my abortion.
They were crying.
They were all looking for one person to
say, you don't have to have an abortion.
And I started becoming that person.
I started counseling women not to have
abortions.
And I'm sure you were.
You're thinking, well, she saved that
many lives are I wasn't thinking about
having lives.
I saved I was thinking about how much
money I'd lost.
And I was confused.
And I fell to my knees and said that
abortion clinic in my prayer at that time
was, Lord, if there is a lord, if this
is not where you want me, hit me over the
head with a two by four.
And I do caution you not to pray that.
But channel for a television
station there in the Dallas area did an
exposé on abortion clinics doing
abortions on women that weren't pregnant.
I believe they sent six women into our
clinic, dressed very young, looking
very innocent, all wired
for sound.
And even though we'd been tipped off, we
couldn't resist the temptation.
We tried to do abortions.
Actually, their star reporter was in
there over two hours.
She had to change her type and was so
convinced she was pregnant after our
sales technique that she rushed to her
doctor who said, no, you're not pregnant.
And we had just tried to do an abortion
on her and is just flashed across the
news screen five days in a row.
Every time they heard the news there,
we were pictures of me going in the
clinic, pictures of me coming out of the
clinic, sketches of how we marketed
abortions with a tape playing in the
background. Yes, babe, you're pregnant.
Got your money. Why don't you just do it
today?
I didn't understand it, but I did have
that incredible piece. It does surpass
all understanding.
I was not to be in the abortion business.
So you walked away from it?
I walked away from it.
And now
you're spending your time.
In what way?
I spend all of my time full time
in the pro-life movement.
I actually believe that God has taken the
very worst experiences of my life and
turning them to good by telling people
like you and our audience the truth
about what happens inside an abortion
clinic.
You know, when you say you're telling
the truth about what happens, I suppose
some people might have listened to that
description you gave just a few
minutes ago of how and how an
abortion is performed and say
they might have said, well, she's
against it now. She's obviously making it
sound as bad and as horrible as she can.
How would you respond to that?
I don't have the words to make abortion
sound as bad as it really is.
It is the taking of a human life.
And I don't believe we as humans can
watch that destruction day after day
without it affecting us.
And it did affect me.
It's a very
horrifying description when you
talk about reaching in with forceps and
crushing and then pulling it out piece by
piece and then reassembling
in order to be sure there haven't
been any pieces left inside.
And yet, you know, that's not an over
description or an exaggeration of what
happened day after day.
No, that's the real thing that's
happening inside that abortion clinic.
Now, you said a while ago that you would
just pray some days, let there be
no one who dies today.
Are you aware of of times that someone
actually lost their life?
Yes, we had a woman die in our clinic.
Well, she didn't actually die in our
clinic. You get them out. So you say
you've never had a death in the clinic.
But she died as a result of an abortion
in our clinic director.
As a result of the abortion, yes,
and what we saw was that we were either,
Meimi, to the point of major surgery
or killing one woman out of 500.
When you talk about counseling
now, you've been a counselor
using that term on both sides of this
situation.
If if you were going to counseling a
young woman today who think she
is pregnant.
What approach do you.
I would certainly get her to identify
with the changes her body's making,
because as soon as you know you're
pregnant, your body's already changing to
accommodate that pregnancy.
They may be slight changes, but she can
feel them.
I would never think of that baby as her
child, as her son or her daughter as
a real baby, not a fetus, not
a product of conception, a blood clot or
a piece of tissue. But as a baby,
I would probably spend some time with her
talking about how she felt about that.
And then I would certainly encourage her
to investigate for herself.
I would take away the urgency you
see in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
There's no reason to rush into an
abortion, although the abortionist will
try to get her to accomplish it very
quickly, telling her how soon she
needs to do it because it's easier on
her.
Take away that pressure, explore all
of her alternatives, because you say deep
in her heart, she's thinking for
thoughts.
She's thinking I can get married and have
this baby.
She's thinking I can have this baby
without the benefit of marriage.
I can have this baby and place it for
adoption in a home that can provide it
with all the things that I can't.
And the last thought she's thinking is
abortion.
But unfortunately, because the abortion
clinics have the two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars a year to keep out
there, they're the first advertisement
she finds the first three options don't
have that sort of money to put into
advertising.
She doesn't know that when she calls that
abortion clinic, she can only explore one
alternative abortion.
That's the only product they sell.
So we such as pregnancy
control here in town, in the crisis,
pregnancy centers around the nation need
to be more available.
We need to be out there and we need to be
offering the right alternatives.
Are there occasions when when the
young lady has already been advised
by someone, perhaps the male
involved, you need to get an abortion?
And so she's already pursuing
what has been suggested to her.
Now, how do you deal with
advice she has already gotten maybe from
people who she's trying to please
in that context?
That's one of the tough ones.
You say she is trying to please him
because she does care for him.
And that's where you really have to to
get a little harder line.
You have to maybe share some pictures and
really talk about that baby and let her
know the truth.
Talk to her about how she'd feel with
that baby a year from now, how she'd feel
without that baby a year from now.
Was there a difference in your own
personal experience
in the approach of
that you took of feeling that abortion
was the solution
and the feeling that you had prior
and then the feeling that you described
after you had had the
abortion, that that
did not seem to be the solution that it
once appeared to be.
The problem was that I really thought
and was told there were no side effects,
no problems. After all, it wasn't a baby.
But instantly, the moment that baby was
gone, I knew that been a lie.
I felt the loss of that baby.
You see, that's the traumatic, unnatural
end of a pregnancy.
And your body has trouble with that.
And I believe every woman feels that as
soon as that baby's gone, it
was difficult for you even as much as you
tried.
Are you saying to convince yourself
that everything was OK?
I spent 13 years of my life
trying to convince myself.
I literally admitted once
at ten years that I'd had an abortion.
I denied that I'd had an abortion.
And I would tell you until three years
ago, it was the best experience of my
life.
Only when I started.
You remember, when you tell one lie,
you start building other lies on top to
cover up.
And that's exactly what happened in my
life.
As happens in many post of women lot
lives, we try to defend our position
because after all, the abortion is
tell us how where the odd one, there's
nothing wrong with you. You would have
had that problem before you had the
abortion. Abortion had nothing to do with
it. And so we're defending ourselves
in our own position.
It's hard to break through in talking
with other women who have had
this experience. Have you found their
experience to be very similar to yours?
Yours isn't that different?
I'm just trying to discover no,
it's funny.
And I have opposed to posterboard of
groups meeting in my home right now.
And literally, if you talk to these women
after the hours and hours it takes to
finally admit that they kill their baby
and that's what they say, these women
will all say the very same things.
I felt as if I killed a part of me.
I knew it was a baby.
It's also interesting that each and every
one of these women perceives the sex
of the child they aborted was either,
you know, like I think mine was a boy.
And I talk about it as a male.
Your experience was one of a
married woman, but many
women approach this decision
unmarried, which I would suspect
caused them to feel much more lonely
and isolated in the process
of having to make the decision and
perhaps to some extent that much more
dependent on someone else, some external.
So somewhere to give them the
advice or the reinforcement about what
that final decision will be,
do you find a difference, any difference
at all in in
whether whether the situation is
with a married or an unmarried woman?
Yes, I do find a difference.
And I think that the unmarried woman
is definitely more prone to choose
abortion simply because she doesn't have
the support.
Although many women who have abortions
today are married, many
don't even want to let the father know
that she's pregnant.
So in many cases, you have people who
are coming in there who who are really
coming in and absolutely no one else even
knows they are there,
which means they may go through this
process and then come out of it
with hoping that no one ever knew they
went, which increases
the pressure or load on them
to have to cope with that matter
because no one else can help them cope
with it because they're unaware of
it.
They have to look normal and yet they
have this big hurt inside.
And again, that's where the scar tissue
comes in and the lie upon lie
to keep hiding what you did.
You know, the description you gave
earlier in our discussion makes it sound
like that to a large extent.
This
this area of abortion
is not driven as much
by concern for health or
what's best, as much as it's driven by
money very differently.
When we put abortion clinics in
consumers, God's will have
them in the right category in society.
And in consumers guides,
remember, it's a marketed product.
It's a product that women are not
choosing. They are being sold.
Your message today to the young
women of America and throughout the world
in one sentence is what
choose life?
It must be very difficult for you to
be as open as you have been
with your own personal experiences.
None of us ever like to admit we made
mistakes or anything.
And so I just want you to know as we
close that I admire the
courage that you demonstrate
and in being able to face
not only your own past, but
to be able to discuss it openly.
Thank you for being with us today.
Thank you very much.
And thank you for being with us on campus
with Carol Everett.