Abortion and Feminism are lies aimed at destroying the family unit God created, a former US abortion clinic owner said in Brisbane, Australia, on July 30. Mrs Carol Everett, 46, owned two abortion clinics in Dallas, Texas, in the early 1980s.

She said she had been on her way to becoming an abortion millionaire in 1983 when she found Jesus Christ � just before a local television station broadcast a story exposing her for trying to sell abortions to non-pregnant women. The incidents had led her to quit the abortion industry and become a pro-life crusader.

Mrs Everett was in Australia in July and August speaking for Right to Life Australia. She said her own family was destroyed when she had an abortion in February 1973. This had been right after the Roe vs. Wade court decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States. She said she knew she had murdered her baby, and had cried constantly for five months.

'Seventy percent of relationships in America break up within 90 days of the abortion. My own marriage did'. She said abortions can cause mental health difficulties, eating disorders, and other serious problems. She had calculated that one woman in 500 died or received a major life-changing injury after a legal abortion.

'I went to psychiatrists every day with my post-abortion syndrome two years after my abortion. The only thing that's helped me is prayer and the Bible.'She said that because of her abortion she had overprotected her son (who is now 28). 'I expected the police to pull up and come to the door and say, "Mrs Everett, your son has been killed for your sin of abortion. You're even now."

Operating abortion clinics had been an attempt to justify her own abortion. Mrs Everett said the spiritual solution to stopping abortions was to get back to God-ordained values.'We've got to understand that God is the Creator of life, and the Bible tells us clearly that life begins at conception.' She said God had ordained a purpose for men, women, and children. 'We've walked away from those values. Feminism has crept in, and it's a lie that's aimed at the family.' She said no woman really wanted to be responsible for herself in the way feminists had to be.

SCHOOLGIRLS GIVEN LOW-DOSE PILL

Current sex-education methods in schools were not a good thing, she said. 'When I was in the abortion industry I knew one thing: birth control sells abortions. If I could get into fourth, fifth, sixth grades, I'd say, "Your mother's an old fuddy-duddy about sex, isn't she?" They would all nod and say yes. So I'd tell them to come to me. I'd give them a low-dose pill.' This had encouraged promiscuity. Some would later fall pregnant and come to her for an abortion. She said there was no such thing as 'safe sex' [outside marriage]. 'Everywhere in the US that has put in sex education it's failed. If we really want to help our kids, let's help them respect themselves enough to say no!'

She said sex education needed to be 'chastity based' and 'abstinence based'. The average young person had no concept that man was made in the image of God as the Book of Genesis recorded, Mrs Everett said. 'Creation doesn't exist in many of our schools today in America. If you're taught evolution, creation cannot even be presumed.' This had meant that society had torn down for children the roles 'the Creator and giver of life' had intended. 'We have robbed our children of those God-ordained roles of man and wife. We've told them sex outside of marriage is OK. So what we've done is break down their natural modesty. We've desensitized these children so that nothing throws them inside or outside of marriage.'

Did she believe she was killing a baby each time she aborted a fetus? 'I knew it was a baby. We talked every day about killing babies.'Clinic workers had counted fingers and toes and other body parts before the baby was put down the disposal. She had trained her employees to think they were freeing the pregnant girl from all sorts of oppression.

'What we've got to remember is that the baby's heart is beating 18 days after conception � four days after the woman misses her period.'

Mrs Everett said pregnant girls sometimes contacted abortion clinics because they had heard the clinic was 'pro-choice' and expected it to tell them all their options. 'Have you ever heard a "pro-choicer" talk about anything but abortion?' She said abortion is not about rights or choices. It's about money. As the owner of the clinics � she was not a doctor � she had received $25 commission for each abortion.

10 OR 12 ABORTIONS AN HOUR

'I expected to make $250,000 to $260,000 in 1983. But in 1984 I'd have five clinics opened. That would be 40,000 abortions and I'd be a millionaire.' She said abortionists in Australia made $190 minimum from each abortion, and they could do 10 to 12 an hour. That's between $1,900 and $2,280 an hour. A local TV station had exposed her clinics when it found out they were telling non-preg-nant women they were pregnant. 'If non-pregnant girl turned up with a negative preg-nancy test we'd try to prove she was preg-nant', she said.

Two non-pregnant undercover television reporters had come to her clinic to see if she would tell them they were pregnant. The clinic had told them they were pregnant and tried to talk them into buying an abortion. Mrs Everett said that at the time the TV station exposed her clinics, before the story appeared on television, a preacher from a local church had been telling her that God wanted her out of the abortion business. He had convinced her to come to some prayer meetings. At one, he had explained salvation to her and asked if she would like to say a prayer.

'We prayed that prayer: it was: "Dear God, I am a sinner, please forgive me of my sins. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ to die on the cross for my sins. Please reign on the throne of my heart as Lord and Saviour, and make me a worker in your vineyard. She said she had thought this was the craziest prayer she had heard.

But after she prayed it and went back to the abortion clinic, she had seen for the first time only sadness and weeping in the girls having abortions.

'Jesus Christ changed me', she said. She quit the business. Mrs Everett said she agreed with a Los Angeles Times study which found that up to 90 percent of journalists favoured abortion on demand, which meant most news reports on abortion were biased. 'It's a big problem. If this were the oil business, the mining business, or any other business, then the money aspects of it would come out. Why haven't the financial aspects of the abortion industry come out?'

She said that Christians must stand up and reaffirm biblical values for parents and children. 'There's not a question today that can't be answered from the Bible. We've got to store the Scripture up in our hearts so it will come out of us.'
What had she gained since quitting the abortion industry and beginning her crusade for Jesus Christ? 'A lot of peace. I sleep at night. It's good to be on the right side. Remember we're the only ones reproducing, so we are going to win.'

FOOTNOTE
Mrs Everett now runs Life Network in Texas. The group counsels post-abortion victims and runs crisis pregnancy centres and right to life groups. She has two adult children, a daughter.
Abortion and Feminism: 'lies destroying the family' Robert Doolan
First published in Creation Ex Nihilo 13(4):14�15, September�November 1991