I’m 23 I had a termination when I was 18. I had no idea how far I was, and I was in two minds.
The doctors and nurses seemed like they didn’t have any time for me. If only I was offered a scan then my baby would have been here now. I still regret what I done. Every morning when I wake up my baby is the first thing on my mind and the last at night. I still brake down and cry. When I had the operation the moment I woke up I felt empty. I knew I made the wrong decision. I don’t know what to do because I’m so depressed. I know now that I was talked in to doing it from my boyfriend and his mum. I torture myself by seeing those photos but its because I hate myself. If you are in two minds never ever go ahead with the termination. NEVER NEVER let anyone talked you in to it. My heart brakes when I think about what my baby was going through. Even the day when my boyfriend drove me to the hospital I was sobbing thinking this little person doesn’t know what his/hers mum is about to do to you. My boyfriend still kept saying shut up its the right thing. Why did I do it? I was a selfish bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A woman who calls herself pro-choice wrote the following:
“I just want my child back and I can never have that. (Expletive), I am never going to heal from this. I’m just going to live in regret, agony, and tears for the rest of my life. I have no purpose.
For a few fleeting moments my purpose was to be a mother and all that is gone now and I am left with nothing. And the would-be daddy? He didn’t give a (expletive). He just wanted me to kill it. He never cared one ounce about his child I was carrying. He didn’t want the responsibility even though he was physically and financially able to give his child the life it deserved. So now here I am. Alone. Empty. Utterly empty. Nothing can replace the child I wanted more than anything when I found out I was pregnant. But that chance has passed and now I am left alone. Crying. Alone. Inconsolable. I no longer have a purpose except to be miserable.”
“What is making it so difficult for me is the fact that I didn’t want to have an abortion. When I found out I was pregnant I wanted the baby. I knew I couldn’t handle an abortion, I knew I didn’t want one, I knew as I sat in the clinic crying I should leave but I didn’t. I got on that table crying, shaking, being told by the nurses I needed to calm down so they could give me the anesthesia. It was horrible. It was traumatic. I don’t know why I didn’t leave. I let TK convince me if I did it everything would be OK, that he was going to take care of everything and make it better. I knew in my gut that was not going to happen. I knew I shouldn’t abort my child but I wanted to believe in the impossible. I wanted to believe that if I did it magically TK and I were going to have some kind of wonderful relationship. We didn’t have a relationship before I got pregnant, why would I think we could have one after? I longed for what I had never had – love, family, someone to be there for me. I knew if I kept the baby TK was going to shut me out so stupidly I did what he asked me to, I aborted my baby.”
Joan Appleton was a head nurse at the Commonwealth Clinic, she states,
“I was very active in the National Organization for Women (NOW). As a registered nurse, I thought that I had a wonderful opportunity as a nurse and as a firm believer in choice to be able to actually practice my political beliefs.
I looked at it as a gift, so I went about working hard at the (abortion) clinic for four years and remained active within NOW.
The doctors that we used were primarily physicians who were starting out in practice and would do abortions until they had enough money to open their own private practice. Or they were physicians who didn’t have such a hot practice and did abortions to pay for their medical malpractice insurance.
I never, ever had a doctor in the five years I was there who did abortions because he believed it was the right of the woman. It was not what was foremost in his mind. I’m not saying that they don’t exist, but you certainly can’t prove it by me or by my clinic.
I have come to the realization that there is a great deal of diversity among abortion clinics in different states. My clinic, in Falls Church Virginia, we were primarily nurses. I was head nurse at the clinic. My entire staff were nurses or lab technicians, and we really didn’t have any type of secular personnel outside of the secretarial work. Upon moving to Minnesota, unfortunately the freestanding clinics that I have found, there are no medical personnel outside of the doctor who is performing the abortion.
The differences in these clinics have to do with state regulations. The state of Virginia is regulated. Medical staff is required. In many, many states, there are no state regulations. So what they end up being, actually, are legalized back alley abortions.
12 week ultrasound
The doctors that we use are, were primarily physicians who were starting out in practice and would do abortions to earn enough money until they had their own private practice going. Or they were physicians who didn’t have such a hot practice and use working at abortion clinics to pay for their medical malpractice insurance, which for especially OB/GYN’s, is extremely high, all across the country.
I was convinced that pro-choice was indeed the best thing for women. I began to work more with organizations like Planned Parenthood, NARAL and NAF on certain projects, and began to learn even more. I was issuing birth control pills after an abortion and this is where I learned the real business, the real work of the abortion industry.
She goes on to describe how clinic workers handed out low dose birth control pills (with a higher failure rate) and neglected to tell women that taking a birth control pill while on antibiotics interferes with the action of the pill and makes it useless. This way, they were able to get more women to come in for abortions, when their birth control failed
I often saw women who were injured emotionally by abortion. However, my supervisor told me, “if she’s having a problem after her abortion, it’s because she was having a problem before her abortion.”…
One of the things that kept bothering me even while I was head nurse in the clinic, was why it was such an emotional trauma for a woman and such a difficult decision for a woman to make, if if it was a natural thing to do. If it was right, why was it so difficult? I had to ask myself that all the time. I asked myself too, I counseled these women so well, they were so sure of their decision, why are they coming back after me now, months and years later, psychological wrecks.
We deny, we in the pro-choice movement and in the abortion industry, deny that there is anything like postabortion syndrome, yet it is real, and they do come back, and I couldn’t deny their presence, and the numbers were increasing, and I kept asking, why?
I started out in the pro-choice movement believing I was helping women, believing that women had the right to choose, they had a right to life, they had the right to go on. I thought when I was counseling women, I was preparing them. I was preparing them, I was helping them through a difficult situation so they could go on with their lives. I told them that they were the most important person on this earth, that nothing was more important than them. And once we see you through this difficult situation, once this is over you can go about your life, you now have the freedom, you can go to college. Guess what folks, it didn’t happen. And I had to stop and say, what’s going on? Why isn’t this happening? Instead you’re going out, you’re getting pregnant again, you’re getting diseases, how am I helping you? And those are the questions that were gnawing, gnawing, and gnawing on me.
If it was right, why are they suffering? What have we done? We created a monster, and that we don’t know what to do with it. We created a monster so that we could now be pawns to the abortion industry, those of us women who really, really still believe in women’s rights. Those of us who still believe in care and are pro-woman, who still believe that we are worth something, we are intelligent, we aren’t doormats, we aren’t something to be used, and we used ourselves. We abused ourselves. And most of us won’t accept it, most of us can’t accept it. Most of the people, those who work in the abortion industry, those who really care and believe, can’t accept the bad part, can’t accept the flaws.
And I too had seen an ultrasound abortion. It was, we did first trimester, this was late first trimester, probably early second trimester, really we could look to 13.7 weeks. Give or take. I can’t remember offhand what the specific problem was, but we wanted to do the abortion by ultrasound, to make sure that we did indeed get the entire, all the baby. The terminology was that we wanted to make sure we had the entire pregnancy. I handled the ultrasound while the doctor performed the procedure, and I directed him while I was watching the screen. I saw the baby pull away. I saw the baby open his mouth. I had seen Silent Scream a number of times, but it didn’t affect me – to me it was just more pro-life propaganda. But I couldn’t deny what I saw on the screen. After that procedure, I was shaking, literally, but managed to pull it together, and continue on with the day.
My way of getting out of NOW was that I was a guest speaker at a Virginia NOW dinner. I got up to the podium and I said, “Folks, I can’t do this anymore. There is something wrong here and I can no longer be a part of the abortion industry or a part of the pro-choice movement and so I can no longer be a part of NOW.”
1st trimester sonogram
Pro-Life Action League: Meet the Abortion Provider
Dr. Tiller was a late term abortionist who practiced in Witchita, Kansas. At the time of his violent and tragic death at the hands of an anti-abortion fanatic, he was facing several malpractice suits and other legal problems. In the following case, Dr. Tiller was accused of deceiving a woman and performing an abortion against her will.
According to Christina Dunigan at Realchoice.com
“Dolores” Meets George Tiller
Dateline: 1/8/99
“In the fall of 1989, [Dolores C.] encountered health problems and bleeding which she associated with pregnancy. On the suggestion of her boyfriend, she went to ‘Women’s Health Care Services’ … to seek medical care and advice.”
On behalf of his client, who I call “Dolores C.” to protect her privacy, attorney Ted Amshoff filed suit against Tiller and his business. What follows is her story, told in her attorney’s words as much as possible.
“When [Dolores C.] first suspected she was pregnant, she did not consider abortion, and she so informed Defendants. [Dolores C.] wanted to keep her baby and she informed Defendants that she did not believe in abortion unless it was the only alternative.”
Dolores had a pregnancy test at Women’s Health Care Services, which confirmed the pregnancy.
“Defendants then told [Dolores C.] that her health was at risk because the pregnancy was ectopic, or tubal, and that the pregnancy was in the fallopian tube on her right side, close to the uterus. Defendants told [Dolores C.] that the risks of death from a ruptured tubal pregnancy was very great, and that ‘surgery’ should be performed to remove the tubal pregnancy.”
Although an occasional undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the uterus) will survive to viability and be delivered without killing the mother, these cases are so rare that they’re considered freakish accidents. Although there have been rumors about doctors successfully transplanting ectopic pregnancies into the uterus, these have not been verified. The only known treatment for ectopic pregnancy is to remove it, either by surgery or by using drugs to kill the embryo and allow it to be expelled or absorbed by the woman’s body.
“In reliance upon the training, expertise, advice, and counsel of Defendants, and under the impression that she was undergoing a procedure to surgically remove a tubal pregnancy, [Dolores C.] consented to such a procedure and submitted to a medical procedure performed by Defendants on November 4, 1989.”
“In actuality, Defendants performed an abortion, terminating a healthy, wanted child or children. [Dolores C.] subsequently learned that her pregnancy had not been ectopic and that the procedure performed had been an abortion.”
Dolores filed suit against Tiller and Women’s Health Care Services in November of 1991.
“[Dolores C.] reasonably relied upon Defendants’ expertise and their representation to submit to the ‘surgery’ as the only method available to save her life.”
The suit also alleges that Tiller and his corporation continued to make attempts to “conceal the true nature of the state of affairs” surrounding the abortion.
“Defendants’ actions in performing an unnecessary and nonconsensual abortion upon Plaintiff was extreme and outrageous conduct, going beyond all possible bounds of decency, and was atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”
I would say so. Tiller’s supporters might think otherwise.
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Once I graduated from medical school, I returned to Memphis for residency in ob-gyn at the University of Tennessee. It had become a tradition within our residency program that the most lucrative and sought after moonlighting jobs were found in the three local abortion clinics.
You could make good money without having to leave town to work nights in hospital emergency rooms.
I knew there were good residents who chose not to do abortions for religious reasons, but I never really understood what one thing had to do with the other. My best friend in college had an abortion, and I had been very supportive of her decision at the time. We were thankful that the Supreme Court had made abortion legal the year after we started college. It seemed only logical that when I was offered the chance to provide those services that I had an obligation to do it. After all, if doctors who believed in a woman’s right to choose didn’t do abortions, who else would?
By the time I was a senior resident, I was medical director of one of the clinics and spent my vacation time at pro-abortion seminars and political functions.
It was not until I was pregnant myself that I began to really examine my feelings about the moral aspects of abortion. It had taken over a year for me to become pregnant with my daughter. The first time I saw the tiny little flicker of her heartbeat on an ultrasound screen I fell completely in love with her. I finally had to come to terms with the fact that the only thing that made my daughter any different than all those tiny babies I had terminated was the fact that I wanted her. It was as if the scales fell from my eyes and I was at last able to see what I had not allowed myself to see in all those years of doing terminations.
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Dr. Moore now conducts training sessions for volunteers at a local crisis pregnancy center about the medical and emotional complications of abortions.
Deborah Henry was hired at an abortion clinic after working at a clinic that did not do abortions. She gives her testimony at the Meet the Abortion Providers Conference in 1993.
“We had quite a few women coming through the clinics who would be referred for abortions.
Three of the doctors that I worked for in that clinic had their own practice and they had four different offices throughout the area. This is where our referrals [were] to.
After a while, I wanted to get out of the clinic because they just weren’t paying enough money. A doctor offered me a position in his own private practice in Livonia, so I took the position. He explained to me that they did the abortions, but again, I didn’t think too much of it. At that time, I was pro-choice, or pro-abortion as now I would say it, and I didn’t really think much about what abortion was. I used to think of abortion as eliminating a problem, instead of killing a baby.
The women who would come into the office mostly came in for an abortion. We only did about four a day–it wasn’t like a typical abortion clinic, but we did more than our share. The women would go through routine exams, blood work and blood pressure, and then we would confirm the pregnancy with a urine test. I did not experience any of the women having abortions who were not pregnant, although this may have happened. I just was not aware of it.
The reasons that women had for having an abortion were totally unreal. I can see this now; but at that time, the brainwashing helped me to understand why they had to have these abortions. We were told as medical assistants that we were there to help the women, no matter what the reasons were. Many women could not afford to have babies, so we would use examples–like the price of babies’ shoes, the price of clothing, how much it cost to raise a baby. If they weren’t finished with their education, the hindrance it would have on their education, how they would have to find a baby sitter, who was going to take care of that baby for them? We would find their weaknesses and work on them. After the basic questions, they were told briefly about what was to happen to them after the procedure. All they were told about the procedure itself was that they would experience slight cramping similar to menstrual cramps, and that was it. They were not told about the development of the baby. They were not told about the pain that the baby would be experiencing or the physical effects or the emotional effects that it would have on them. They had no idea who was going to be there to help them when they fell apart afterwards. They were taken into the room then, and, as I said, there was no counseling done. These women basically had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They were just told to lay on the table; they were undressed.
Some of the women were a little apprehensive about it. We were told that in explaining to them that we could never use the word “babies.” It was always tissues, tissues of cells or clusters of cells or products of conception. We would then start the procedure.
unborn baby at eight weeks
There were three basic procedures that we would use, and I will go into a little bit more detail about them. The first one is the most common procedure that is used–that is the vacuum curettage. From some research that has been done, it was explained that the suction on these machines is 49 times stronger than that of your home vacuum cleaner. I realize that many of you are familiar with many of the procedures that we do, and some of you may not be. But for those of you who are, please bear with me and just think about what I am saying. I have seen this, and I am here to reaffirm what you have heard, because everything you read about is the truth. None of this is lies. We don’t exaggerate any of it.
The vacuum curettage is normally done between 6 and 8 weeks of pregnancy. The instrument is inserted into the woman’s uterus, and then the baby is sucked out of the uterus. She experiences the pain and the baby is then pulled into the jar. We would take it out of the little sac, lay it in the pan. The doctor would then come in and examine it. If he felt that it was adequate enough tissue, we would take the baby, put it into a jar and send it to the lab if the mother had insurance. If she had no insurance, the baby was simply put down the garbage disposal.
14 weeks – early D&Es are done at this stage
The second common procedure that I have assisted in is the D&E, which is dilation and evacuation. This is normally done between 9 and 16 weeks of pregnancy. I noticed many times that the laminaria was brought into the description. But in my experience, we did not use laminaria all the time; sometimes, we did. A laminaria would be inserted the day before and then the next day, the women would come back in to have the procedure done. However, on the ones that did not have the laminaria, we would use instruments, that are like long metal rods and each end is a little wider than the last one which were inserted into the cervix to help dilate it. of course, through this procedure, the woman is going through a lot of pain. She is given an IV of Valium and Sublimaze to help make her relax, but she is awake during the whole procedure.
The procedure starts with an aspiration of the fluid, and then the doctor uses his forceps to go in and literally break the limbs off of the baby. There was one incident where a white piece came out and I asked the doctor later on what it was, and it was the baby’s skull. I can still, to this very day, hear the crushing noise of that baby’s skull being crushed. The women are feeling pain. It is not until after the procedure that they realize what is happening to their baby or to themselves. Ninety percent of these women start crying afterwards and it is not because of the pain.”
….
20 weeks – candidate for D&E
“The women were never given any type of alternatives to the abortion. It was just automatically assumed that they knew what they wanted. They were never told about adoption agencies. They were never told about people out there who were willing to help them–to give them homes to live in, to provide them with care and even financial support. The euphemisms that are used — clusters of cells, products of conception, or just plain tissue — are all lies.
10 weeks
I have been there, and I have seen these totally formed babies as early as 10 weeks, a couple of inches long with a leg missing, or with their head off. These are things that I have to live with now. I know the Lord has forgiven me, but I can never erase those things from my mind. The sounds of those bones breaking, The sight of those babies. It seems like the longer I go on working with the Pro-Life people, the more it is affecting me. I can understand the reality of a baby inside of you–a full baby growing.
One of the famous lines that the doctor’s wife used to use after the procedure, when she would come in and the women were crying–she would pat them on their shoulder and say: “It’s okay, honey, everybody makes mistakes–that’s why pencils have erasers.” How can you erase that thought from your mind? Where is she going to be when that woman is threatening suicide because she realizes that she killed her child, and there is no bringing that baby back. Where is she going to be then? She is off, counting her money and buying new cars, or whatever. She doesn’t care.
When I was in Nuremberg, I came across an interesting story I always repeat this when I speak–about little Josh. His mother went through a divorce and had an affair shortly afterwards. She got pregnant and she was forced to have an abortion. Afterwards, she kept experiencing pain, so she went to the doctor. She had not had any relationships since this one. So, she knew that she could not have been pregnant again because she had had the abortion and had not had any relations. That doctor had told her that what had happened was that because of the abortion, she developed a tumor, and that they were going to have to perform a hysterectomy. She was on the table, just about ready for the surgery, when the doctor did another exam and found that it was not a tumor. She was, in fact, still pregnant. She continued on with the pregnancy and little Josh was a miracle in himself. At the program, he had a sweatshirt on that said: “I Survived the Abortion Holocaust.” Unfortunately, because of the procedure, he did have a scar on the side of his head, and slightly impaired hearing and vision. What they think happened was that he might have had a twin that was, indeed, aborted.
…
10 to 12 weeks
We had a rather interesting group of people outside of our clinic–the picketers. They were out there almost every single day, with their signs, walking back and forth, really looking ridiculous out there. We were told to ignore them because they were silly. They didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t understand the justification for these women, and, of course, I believed it. So when I would go to my car every day they were out there. I would look down–I wouldn’t look at them at all. I was afraid that they would say something to me. But I found out that they were all very loving people. One of them in particular is Lynn Mills. She is the Director of the Michigan Pro-Life Action League. We have since become best of friends.
…
One day we decided to meet at a local restaurant with one of my other co-workers, and she had taken along one of her friends. We debated all of these questions that I thought meant that it was okay to have an abortion. Lynn had a reason or an answer for every single question that I had for her. I went back. It took a little while longer, but eventually it hit home. More than that, I think it was the Lord working on me then. I really think that he has given me the strength to endure everything that I saw in that clinic. I was only there for six months, but I think there was a reason for it because now I can go out and tell everybody what I experienced.
…
16 weeks
There are a few more experiences that I want to go into before I forget. There was one incident of a baby who was about 16 weeks. One of the girls had called me into the lab as she was cleaning up, and on the end of the cannula, which was the instrument at the end of the hose, was a little baby’s foot. It was about half an inch long. This foot was perfectly formed. I couldn’t believe it. I was so amazed by the sight of it. It was all black and blue. When you drop something on your foot and your foot becomes bruised, it is usually because of pain. This baby’s body was completely ripped apart because of the abortion.
In another incident, the hose popped off of the machine, and we had blood splattered all over us. This poor woman just lay there and cried. It was too late for any of us to do anything about it. That baby was dead.
I was told that one of the Pro-Life problems is that we talk too much about the babies being ripped apart. We show terrible pictures–we dwell on these too much. What are we supposed to do? This is the reality of abortion. Are we supposed to say, Oh, don’t go into that abortion–your fetus, or tissues, will become deceased? It doesn’t make sense. You tell them the truth–the facts. We are not there to lie to them. I am there to tell them the truth. Babies are being ripped up. Yes, babies do look like this after an abortion. And yes, it does hurt your baby, and most of all, it does affect the woman.
There was an incident of a 14-year-old girl this past spring, who was pregnant. Her mother forced her to have an abortion. The doctor botched it up and now she’s sterile. How is that mother going to answer to that girl when she grows up and understands later on that she will never be able to have a child?
We had a lady who came into the clinic who was married to a foreign man. This was really interesting because still, to this very day, I don’t understand how this marriage was existing. He could not speak English, and she couldn’t speak his language. I guess there was some communication, but not enough. She told him that she wanted to make a baby. He didn’t know what he was doing and she ended up pregnant. So when she told him they were going to have a baby, he was upset. He didn’t want a baby. He didn’t know this was what he was doing. So, she went in and had an abortion. Just like that–for no reason. She didn’t want a baby now. That was it.
five weeks
We had another woman who came into the clinic who was on her ninth abortion. She was about 40 years old. Nine! There is no justification for it. I just don’t understand it. I get dumbfounded sometimes just thinking about it again.
….
Our doctors used to also work with surrogates, which is becoming a very popular thing now for infertility patients. I couldn’t understand how he could go in one room and kill a baby, and go in the next room and give his full effort in trying to impregnate another woman for a couple who could not have a baby. It was even stranger because every once in a while, we would get a letter from, for instance, a couple in California who couldn’t have any children. They were sending letters out to different offices, hoping that they would get a response from a pregnant woman who was willing to give up her baby for adoption to them. The doctor wouldn’t consider that at all. I mentioned it to him. I said that this couple was so nice–a nice picture, a nice home, and they made nice money. They could offer a baby everything. I asked the doctor why we couldn’t refer one of our women to them? He said that we couldn’t do that–the women were here because that is what they want to do and we were not to interfere with their decision. That was all of the answer that we would ever get.
Probably the most effective thing that converted me over was a nightmare that I had one night, shortly after I had met with Lynn. I had this dream that I was in the examining room with the doctor, and we had just completed an abortion. Alongside her table was another little table and we had a little baby that was about so long. I had never really experienced this, but this baby was born. He was just laying on the side of the table. His little leg was dangling off the side and his body was covered with a paper towel. The mother looked over and said, “Do I have to lay here and look at this baby?” The doctor asked me to take the baby into the lab. I picked up the baby, It was one of those dreams where there is an endless hall, and you are walking on and on and on, and you are never getting to your destination. All I could feel in my hand was this big baby. I woke up and I was crying and in a sweat. I was never so shaken by anything in my life. It was the most horrible experience that I have ever had. For the first time in my life, I realized that what I had been involved in was killing innocent babies. I didn’t do the abortion itself, but I might as well have. I handed those instruments to the doctor. I still have nightmares–not as often and not as much, but I think it is a reminder to tell me that I have to keep going on for these babies, and with the love and support that I get from all my new Pro-Life friends, I am able to do this. I hope that there are some people here infiltrating our convention because you know what I am saying is true. I want you to think about this. When you go home and you have nightmares about those dead babies, it is because you are killing them. That is all there is to it. Abortion is murder. There is no other way to put it. Hopefully, you will call one of us, and, I guarantee, we will be there with open arms to greet you and to help you through this ordeal.
This testimony came from a conference held by The Pro-Life Action League
“I got into my medical training. As part of the medical training, abortions became a necessary procedure, according to my chief of my department. This was in 1971. This was a few years before the law changed in the country, but it changed in New York a few years before, and the abortion law changed, and we were going to do abortions. After all, we needed to serve women. We needed to do it in a complete way. We needed to know all the procedures that we needed to do for women. We needed to know how to do them well; otherwise we weren’t considered effectively trained. Our chief said that if we didn’t do the abortions, we might as well get out of obstetrics and gynecology because we just wouldn’t be a complete physician. He was a very influential man. I remember that he would be up with us at night, very frequently, with patients.
He wasn’t an “ivory tower” sort of guy–distant from the other residents in my training program. He was there with us, so we respected this man. He was brilliant, but right there on the frontlines with us, so when we started doing the abortions, we had panels. I don’t know if any of you remember that, but there were panels that the women had to pass by before they had the abortion. They were made up of nurses, social workers, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and the like, to very carefully see if the women really were rather ill, medically or emotionally, before they had the abortion.
The abortions, when we started, were done by the D&C method–there was no suction then. This is where you dilate and curette–you actually scrape the lining. This took, sometimes, 15 to 20 minutes, even for an eight- or ten-week-size uterus, so it was kind of a bloody sort of thing. We didn’t really like it, doing it, when we started, really. one doctor was Catholic, so he was allowed by his beliefs not to do that, but the others of us went along with peer pressure.
We thought about it, though, and we felt uncomfortable about it, but we sort of did it. We knew we were going about it quite carefully, and we only did about five or six a week, so amongst 12 or so residents, that meant we only did one about every two weeks.
But things gradually changed–new technology came along; we developed the suction procedure, and things went much quicker. It wasn’t as bloody and it was quicker and it was a little bit easier to take. I can’t really say that any of us had nightmares about this thing at that time. We just felt kind of uncomfortable doing them. But when the suction came along, we did them quicker, and then we did five or six in a day. Then gradually, those panels dropped by the wayside.
We were doing too many to really have them go through this arduous, long process of evaluation, and then the reasons, of course, for abortion–the severity of the reasons, medically, became less and less, and then emotional problems needed to be less and less severe. It was a gradual desensitization, so to speak, or toleration of doing them, more and more and in larger numbers.
Then we advanced up along in pregnancy a little bit further. It used to be we didn’t go beyond about ten weeks. Then we want up to 12 and we kind of stayed there for a while.
The media was very active early on. It really probably was one of the major influences to us. It told us that abortion was number one, legal, that it was to serve women, it was to give women a choice, more or less give them a freedom to grow and to take their rightful place in society where they had been kind of pushed down prior to that.
We believed the lie that there were tens of thousands of women being maimed and killed from illegal abortions prior to the legalization of abortion law. It kind of made things feel a little bit better. By this time, since we were doing five or six a day, it didn’t bother us as much.
In my life at this time, too, I had become married and I had moved, back in 1973, from Albany down to Atlanta, Georgia, with the Army–Uncle Sam got me. I spent two years there at Fort McPherson in Atlanta Georgia. During that time, I had one baby; then I had another baby, and I have two boys. I also began working in abortion clinics. That was the newest thing. There were like seven or eight of them at that time in Atlanta.
I had been moonlighting at other times to make money to save to go into practice, because going into practice is expensive for a young doctor, and you needed to save your money in order to do that, so the clinics offered an easy way to make money.
Prior to that, I had to do insurance physicals, and I had to travel all over the countryside to do them, so that didn’t really pay off too well. I had to go down and work in Emergency Rooms a hundred miles away for 36, 48 hours at a time; up all that time working.
And they didn’t pay me, maybe a few hundred dollars for doing that, so that wasn’t going to amount to much. In the clinic, I could make $25.00 for each abortion case, but we did 20 or 30 of those some days, and I remember one day, when they really got going, we did 62. That was my high point, or, you might say, low point. So you could make a great deal of money doing the abortions, it became quite evident.
Through my industriousness and my skill, I was sort of appointed by the medical director of the clinic to more or less take over the running of the clinic from the medical perspective and I, myself, became the medical director of a clinic there.
Something was happening to me also at that time, emotionally, though. As it has been spoken about, I could do an abortion–rather, I could do several hours of abortions–and feel nothing. I was just a good technician. I think at the most, I would get a little bit of a charge out of the fact that women occasionally would thank me for doing the abortion.
They were really relieved of the pressure that that would have brought on to their lives. But, for the most part, I didn’t think much of it at all at that time. It wasn’t until I became divorced and began really searching for something more. It was sort of like, here I was a doctor; I was making a lot of money; but what did I have?
There must be more to life than this. I sort of had this searching feeling from inside of me. Something was not there. Something was missing. I thought at first it might be love, you know. So you take that to its natural extreme–I had a relationship with a woman outside the marriage–and the marriage broke up, and I became divorced.
The sad part, of course, was that two little boys lost a father in the case. But still, I was determined. I felt that this time, I finally had it made–here I was, a bachelor doctor in Atlanta, Georgia, with just everything before me. I got all the women I wanted, and all the good times, life in the fast lane, so to speak. I really felt that I had it made, but I still had this gnawing sort of emptiness inside.
What happened then was a Christian girl came into my life and influenced me, basically. The reason she came into my life to start with is because the only prerequisite that I had for dating somebody was that they looked good. She happened to look good. So with that great motivation, the Lord twisted that around. She broke up with me, but on doing so, she gave me two Scriptures.
Now that should have, under this influence, had absolutely no influence on this guy at all. You have to picture me now. I was a bachelor doctor; I had an Afro and a beard that made my face look rather round all the way; I had a leather jacket from K-Mart–it wasn’t really leather, but it looked good, and I looked tough and I took Karate to prove it. I had a motorcycle, too, of course. You have to have a motorcycle with a jacket.
So this is this person here. Why this Christian ever dated me, I have no idea, but God did. She gave me two Scriptures–Jeremiah 15 and Psalm 139:13-18, well known to a lot of people. I had not read the Bible for years–you know that–and I hadn’t. But for some reason, these Scriptures meant something to me.
Now, she knew I had done abortions and felt terrible about them and this was to hopefully change my mind, and I kind of laughed. But when I read them, I didn’t laugh because it was just as if there was a knife that went right through my middle and it made me realize that instead of serving women, I was killing babies. This slowed this super-macho guy down real quick. But, it didn’t stop me from doing the abortions.
What those Scriptures say, briefly, and meant to me, is that God knew us before we were conceived (me, before I was conceived–all the babies I ever killed, before they were conceived), He had plans for their lives and they became human beings to me, in the truest sense of the word–they became babies, they became children, really, in a deeper sense than ever before. So, what they did to me was they made me feel uncomfortable doing the abortions. I just plain felt uncomfortable doing them. The Lord knew this.
14 weeks – D&E abortions are usually done after this point
At the same time, He knew that I was going to be starting to do these D&E procedures, because just at that time the D&E procedures were starting up in the clinic. Now, as you have heard about these, the babies are bigger.
They are visible, they are fully-formed babies, and you are tearing them apart from below. I was experienced–I had done many, many thousands by then–so I was sent to Chicago to learn this procedure, and I did, because no one else knew how to do them safely. So, I did them and I started doing them, and then I really started feeling uncomfortable.
The other thing that was shocking to this science of fetology that may have been talked about today was well-developed now. Interestingly enough, almost parallel with the abortion movement, this (I am sure God set this up, of course) was to show everyone that at the same time we are killing babies to tell us that they really were babies.
I think the greatest thing there is– there are all sorts of details on babies feeling things and having brain waves and being so well-developed and almost indistinguishable really from us and our own sensitivities–but I think the greatest thing that got to us was the ultrasound. At that time, the ultrasound was a sound wave picture which was moving, called real-time ultrasound, to show the baby really on TV.
The baby really came alive on TV and was moving and that picture–that picture of the baby on the ultrasound bothered me more than anything else, because as I didn’t know then really, you bond with that picture. Women get those pictures even if they are still pictures, and boy, it’s their baby and they put it up on walls, they bring it in to show it to me, and they don’t even know what’s there, but they see head, arm, leg all typed out for them so they know what it is, but they know it’s a baby.
Anyway, the nurses had to help with this, had to look at this to stage how far along the D&E was, because you got paid more if it was 14, 16, more if it was 18 weeks and so on. In other words, the larger the pregnancy, the more you got paid, and the more the clinic got also. So it was very important for us to do that and to make sure they weren’t too large for us to do.
When we started, we lost two nurses. They couldn’t take looking at it. Some other staff was lost. The turnover got greater when we started doing the D&Es and mostly, as I said, the ultrasounds.
So I think the ultrasound was one of the keys there. The other thing, too, is because the women who are having the abortions are never allowed to look at the ultrasound, because we know even if they heard the heartbeat that many times they wouldn’t have the abortion, and you wouldn’t want that. No money in that.
So that science, my intellectual development, and my heart development were kind of running parallel at that time. Well, I was undaunted. I was going to still search for the “truth” so I decided to start giving a little bit more. I had kind of been a taker all my life–at this time of my life, I was quite a taker–so I was going to give back to people, so I joined the Lion’s Club, and I roared with the best of them. And I got plaques for doing good stuff, for myself, really–it made me feel good. But it didn’t–it still came up empty, so that didn’t work too well so I decided to become active in the medical community. I got active in the hospitals and got all sorts of boring committees and things.
Back in my earlier life, even in college, I was in the campus religious council, and we went out and painted churches and did all sorts of good stuff. It made me feel good. When I was in high school, we did some of those things, so I kind of went back to that. I thought maybe that would help this empty feeling. So I did that, and that came up empty. I was Vice President of the Medical Society–so what? It just didn’t come up getting me what I needed.
I even went out and got into searching for the truth in the occult. This was actually quite interesting. I got into astroprojection–this is where you lie in your bed with candles on, humming this funny stuff and vibrating one toe, and then the next and pretty soon your whole body and then– poof! You pop out. But beware, because getting back isn’t always as easy as going out, you know. So that was kind of cool.
But what that really did was leave me with this dreadful fear, such that this macho man with a leather jacket and a motorcycle had to sleep with his light on at night–a nightlight for macho man, you know.
That didn’t work, so I said I will try one more thing (I was getting desperate, by this time). I decided to try psychic surgery–this has got to be it! Psychic surgery is it! What I had to do was read a lot of this stuff–Mexico seemed to be a hotbed for this–so I was even going to go down there, but anyway, I started reading about this, and getting into this.
At the same time I was doing this searching which didn’t get me anywhere, obviously, God put in my life an activist…a Christian activist who worked for me part-time, but for God, full-time. He put her right in my office, I’ll call her Becky (that was her name). Becky was married and she did something very interesting.
She became a friend of mine partly because she took in foster children–hundreds of foster children. She adopted a couple a little later on, but see I appreciated that because I was in foster homes before I was adopted and I liked that, and God knew that. So, he put her in there and we became friends.
Now the key about Becky was that Becky, I knew, didn’t like abortions. Everyone knew Christians were those picket-line freakos, you know. They didn’t like abortions. She never judged me; she never put me down; she became my friend. She loved me.
Despite the fact that every week, a couple of times a week, I would go down to the clinic and do my abortions in great numbers. But she stuck with it. She also took me to church, a large church that believes in spreading the truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ to everybody, every week, embarrassingly calling you up front to make a decision for Christ. Now, I knew about that, really. I knew about all that stuff I read in the Bible. I have plaques for reading the Bible.
I knew about that stuff and I even agree that it probably was true–a lot of that stuff. But I had chosen not to do that when I was around 19, just before I went off to college years ago. So I kind of listened for about a year and a-half.
Now I am coming back to my occult experience that I dropped off at before, and I was just about ready to get into psychic surgery. I had a course all lined up at the Foundation of Truth, I kid you not, that was their name–Foundation of Truth. I knew I had come down to the point where I knew I was looking for truth, and so I was all set to take this course down at this institution which was right around the corner from the abortion clinic. How convenient. After I finished the abortion Saturday, I could go down there and take my course. The course was cancelled; I missed out!
But at that same time, I became gradually convinced that what they said in church was truth–that God did come down here, in the form of Jesus Christ; that He did die for our sins; and that I wanted to have a relationship through God that would guarantee me getting into heaven–not upon what I could do, because I couldn’t do enough. I tried, but I couldn’t do it. So, I wanted to become a Christian, but I knew I couldn’t be a good Christian abortionist.
It just didn’t make sense. It’s sort of like being a good Christian gangster, as alluded to in Chuck Colson’s book–you can’t be a good bad guy. So I was on the fence.
Now, what kept me on the fence for a year and a half was money. I had become trapped by the money; not that I wouldn’t give up money, necessarily, for certain things, but not my whole life. And now I was getting divorced.
By the way, a divorced doctor is known as a poor doctor in Atlanta. The reason for that is that your ex-wife gets a whole lot of money. In my case, she got two-thirds of my income. Now half of my income was tied up in doing the abortions, and the other half in a gynecology practice. I mention a gynecology practice because I didn’t do obstetrics. I couldn’t deliver babies. I just didn’t do that.
I said I was giving up delivering because my abortions were my deliveries. Kind of a hard-hearted sort of a guy. You know, it was good not having to get up at night and so forth. It just worked out that way. So, here I was with two-thirds of my income having to go to support my ex-wife and fifty percent of my income, though, being involved with abortion.
Therefore I assumed that I would go immediately bankrupt. Now the reason I assumed that even more was my ex-wife was not friendly. It took nine hearings just to get divorced. I just knew it was going to be a terrible thing to do, so I had to come to grips with a little bit of an honesty within me that said, Yes, you can wait till you finish up paying your wife off–it was only like a year or so later that I would be finished making these enormous payments. But the voice said, Do it now. Do it now. It said, Trust Me. A lot of voices were also saying you’re going bankrupt; you’re going to have all sorts of problems.
So, on October 23rd of 1983 (it was a Saturday), I went and did my last abortions on just a few patients. That wasn’t my weekend to work so it was just a few patients. And I knew it would be the last day. And that evening, I said No to money and Yes to God, and I called up Becky. Now, Becky has a voice about 50 decibels when she gets excited. So she was excited and the next day I went down to church and opened my mouth and confessed with my mouth that Jesus was Lord and went right up to the altar and cried there with the best of them at the altar.
Then, on the way out of church, I saw this blue brochure for a crisis pregnancy center. I just looked at it and kind of felt that this was what I should be involved with. So I picked that up, and the next day I called up the center and said I needed to speak to the head of it. I told them I was a doctor in Atlanta and had done many, many thousands of abortions, and that I came to Christ the day before and now wanted to do everything to save babies instead of take their lives. Well, there was this silence on the phone. You could hear a pin drop, but what I did hear was his Adam’s apple going up and down. Is this guy for real?
Anyway, he kind of squeaked out, we’ve gotta talk, and so we went down by the lovely Chatahootchie River–a lovely river in Atlanta–and we talked. And he said, people are going to need to hear this. I am the world’s worst speaker–very fearful of speaking– and now I know exactly what he meant.
So that is what I have been doing since then. I think the centers were, at that time, parallel in my heart to what Becky did. They were one of a new wave of love that’s going on throughout this country, where they are loving the women who have abortions. They are presenting the Gospel to them; they are giving, sacrificially, in many cases, of their time, of their money, of their willingness to take them into their homes, regardless of whether they keep the baby or give it up for adoption or even abort the babies.
They will talk to them after the abortion, if they have problems–they just never give up on these women. And that non-judgmental, fully-accepting love I think is what really attracted me most to continue with those crisis pregnancy centers, and I think it is really what is going on here today and throughout the country.
Now, since then, what happened? Well, not only did God give me a new life, everything was completely different after that, and here is this guy who did all the abortions now talking to people about saving babies. What a twist, right? He also gave me gifts, and one of the greatest gifts He gave me was my wife, Patty, a lovely woman whom I met at church, and who had a ministry of her own with alcoholics, and who takes wonderful care of me.
What happened about my money? Well, things got a little pinched for a while, as you might expect. My ex-wife has never been known to accept any agreement for payback. We had to come up with an agreement to try to change the financial arrangements. She has never been known to accept anything, not only from me but from any of my attorneys or her six attorneys. Attorneys love me in Atlanta. My attorney uses my case as an example of what not to do.
Anyway, I had to come to grips with saying that I needed to pay back all my debts, even though I said it’s not fair. I am only making half of my income. How can I pay all of this out? So I had to come to grips with saying that, No, the Bible says that if someone asks for your cloak, you give them your tunic, too.
And when I came to that position and that feeling in my heart, the Lord just gave me a plan, and guess what she did? She accepted it. And I am paid up. It’s been a few years now.
On top of that, it took me about ten years, and perhaps more than that when you consider that rest of my life before that, too, to gain a certain estate amount–a certain amount of net worth and all.
Since I have changed my life, my net value or worth has increased by two times what I had before, and, as you notice, in one-third of the time. You have to remember that I lost everything that I had made before–well over a million dollars worth of real estate and everything. And that from basically nothing–I used to have to eat in the hospital because it was free–my wife gives a story of my inviting her over for dinner and having two slabs of cheese and water.
I was poor. And from that position, in just a short period of time, the Lord has done this. Also, I have a medical building–the land and the whole thing is mine–that’s another whole story I won’t get into, but the Lord set that whole thing up. I also have a new partner–a new partner who had to leave the hospital she was taking her life’s training at because she refused to have anything to do with abortion. The Lord has put that kind of person around me and that kind of person to be my partner. I never advertised for a partner–I didn’t have to.
I think there are two things that I’ll just briefly mention in the end. There are two things that are problems in any movement: apathy and disunity. Basically, apathy is saying something like: I am sick and tired of it all and I just don’t care about it anyway. It’s the type of thing that can be fought very easily. All you have to do is be available and be involved. If you are involved, you are influenced by others and the point of the whole thing is that if you don’t do something, the Lord is going to hold you responsible. Proverbs 24 was mentioned and it states quite clearly that if you know people are being led to slaughter, and if you don’t do anything about it, you are guilty of murder. And the other thing is, time is running out.
Martin Luther said, “If I knew the Lord was coming tomorrow, I would plant a tree today.” And I think that’s just a stimulus to you all. I know you are all active, but take that sense of urgency–we are running out of time.
Number two is disunity. The Surgeon General had talked to me a while back, and he had come over to Emory for a conference, and he had said that really, if we had gotten it all together and got united, we would have licked this thing a long time ago. The key to all that is we have to put down ourselves.
We have to put down our own denominations that might tend to separate us. We need to put down our traditions, put down our particular ministries, our maternity homes, our crisis pregnancy centers–whatever–that we all consider our own, really. They are not ours–they are God’s. And basically they make us interested in ourselves, and all this tends to really separate us.
But we need to be united in the humility of the servant, serving these women, and what they need most is love…the love that was shown to me by God, for forgiving me so that I can stand up here and talk to you all, and let you know what’s going on and what happened to my life. We need to love the pregnant women for sure, their little babies within them, their husbands, their boyfriends, their families. Love the abortionists; love their staff; love those that hate you. In the words of Mother Teresa also, “Give till it hurts, and then give some more” for life itself is at stake.
I would like to end with Scripture, Ecclesiastes 11:5:
Now our hope is in God. And even when we don’t know the way, He does. And the Bible says that God’s ways are as mysterious as the pathway of the wind. And as the manner in which a human spirit is infused into the body of a little baby inside its mother.
So keep on sowing your seed for you never know which will grow. Perhaps it all will. And the silent least of our society are blessed by youth.
Note: Religious beliefs expressed in testimonies are not endorsed by the website owner.
This testimony came from a conference held by The Pro-Life Action League
Carol Everett with the administrator of four abortion clinics and the owner of two. After becoming pro-life and leaving the abortion business, she speaks about her experiences. This is the testimony she gave at the Meet the Abortion Providers Conference in 1993 sponsored by the Pro-Life Action League
“Thank you all for coming. In 1973, when abortion was legalized, I was married, had an 8 year-old daughter and a 10 year-old son. Two weeks later, with abortion very much in the news and everywhere we turned we were still talking about abortion, I found myself pregnant. When I told my husband, I was excited. But his initial reaction was, you’ll just have to have an abortion. Because I really didn’t want to deal with that with him, I decided I’d look for someone to help me. I went to my friend, my doctor, and cried out to him, and said, “Harvey, Tom doesn’t want me to have this baby.” And he said, “Oh, that’s easy, we’ll bring Tom’s urine in, the test will be negative, we’ll do the abortion in the hospital, and your insurance will pay for it”.
What I’m telling you is that this man offered to do an illegal abortion in the State of Texas and, yes, indeed, we did it. I was looking for someone to tell me not to have the abortion and I ran into an abortion salesman. And that’s what happens in our nation today. We’re going to talk a lot more about that, but let’s go back to my story and what happened to me.
When I woke from that abortion, I picked up the telephone, and literally started working from my hospital bed, not realizing that I was already running from that decision. Within a month I was having an affair, and that had not been one of my patterns prior to that time. Very soon I started drinking; I’d not ever drunk in my life and I would go out and just get drunk once a month. It was almost like on target; once a month I had to do it. Very soon I asked my husband to leave, and then I started seeing a psychiatrist daily.
At the rate of $125.00 an hour, I could not go on with this very long. So I decided to do what I called, “get hold of myself.” I changed everything I could in my life, except my children. I got away from the job I’d had; got away from my husband, and decided I would make it on my own. What I’m telling you is the story about how my life went along at a pretty good level for a while, and the moment I had that abortion, it went straight downhill. And I think that’s what happens to every woman who has an abortion.
One of the things that I want to impress upon you today is, yes, we do have to save the babies; they’re important. But we’re saving the mother, and, yes, we’re saving the father. My ex-husband has been in counseling all this year trying to deal with this abortion. And we’re saving all those family units in our entire nation. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us.
When I did get hold of myself, I went to work for a nice Catholic man who had a medical supply business. At about this time abortion became legal in the State of Texas, and very soon we had an account on-line that was very profitable for us. We were making over $1,000 a month profit out of this account. So he decided that he wanted to look into it to see exactly what sort of business they were, and yes, indeed, they were an abortion clinic. So this great Catholic man who told me he never wanted to see an abortion, never wanted to know what an abortion really was, opened his first abortion clinic, and soon he had four. All this time he kept inviting me to join. He kept saying, come over and do this, come over and do that; if you’ll go out and sell abortions for me, I’ll pay you $10 an abortion, and on and on and on. I kept selling medical supplies, and finally the day came when I needed to make more money, and I went in and said, hey, I’m quitting my job; I want to go with another company. And he said, give me some time; let me come up with something. So, he got me on the fringe of the abortion industry by asking me to go out and set up referral clinics all over Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. And I did that for a while and it was quite profitable. Then one day the call came: Come into the clinic; I need you to work in here for a month.
seven week unborn baby
When I got in the clinic I had to decide whether to get involved in the abortions over here (and I am a scrub tech, so I have been involved in the medical industry for a long time), or if I was going to get involved with the numbers. And since I had that option, I got involved with the numbers. With just a very few small changes, his abortions went from 190-195 per month to over 400 per month. So then he sent me to another clinic. I went to his Fort Worth clinic, and yes, we were soon doubling his abortions over there. The last month I was with him in those two clinics (by then he had split with his partner), he was doing something over 800 abortions a month.
I went in and said, hey, look, I’ve doubled your business, come on, give me an equity interest in the business. And he politely said no, and I politely scheduled my hysterectomy, the kids teeth being fixed, everything his insurance would pay for, and, by the way, I placed my Yellow Page ad to come out in six months for my own abortion clinic. We opened and the first month we did 45; 65; 85, and the last month I was there, with two clinics functioning in the Dallas area, we did over 500 abortions a month in that clinic. I was compensated at the rate of $25.00 per case, plus one-third of the clinic’s, so you can imagine what my motivation was. I sold abortions. I had made $150,000; was on target in 1983 to make about $260,000; and when we opened our five clinics, I would have been taking home about a million dollars a year. I expected to make more than that after we were really functioning.
All of this sounds neat. I had two kids in college, and I was alone and I was making plenty of money. But that money went absolutely nowhere. Taking home that much money a month, I literally couldn’t even pay my utilities… That money literally ran through my fingers so that my motivation was to do more abortions to make more money, and on and on and on.
….
Now what I do is just go around and tell people the truth about what really happens inside one of the abortion mills. There are all sorts of experiences with the abortion. I want to walk you through my experiences in an abortion clinic.
Let’s just step back. How many of you have children 14 and under? How many of you have seen a number, unsolicited, that you think you could call that said, “Problem Pregnancy,” “Abortion Information,” or “Pregnant?” in your area where you think you could call for abortion information? Let’s talk about those kids when they find out that they are pregnant. They may not want an abortion; they may want information. But when they call that number that’s paid for by abortion money, what kind of information do you think they’re going to get? Let’s remember, they sell abortions. They don’t sell keeping the baby. They don’t sell giving the baby up for adoption. They don’t sell delivering that baby in any form. They only sell abortions.
In the State of Texas, a girl can come in to have an abortion, and the abortion clinics are not required to have parental consent. Most of the abortion clinics in Texas do require it for 14 and under. However, let’s paint this picture: The girl comes in, has an abortion, she can sign for it. But when the doctor rips her uterus out and they take her to the hospital, they won’t admit her until her parents get there and are told she had this abortion without their consent. And they will not repair the damage or try to save her life until the parents sign on the dotted line. And that happens. It’s terrible.
So the girl calls this number and says, I’m pregnant. How far along are you? What’s the first day of your last normal period? They’ve got their wheel there and they figure it out. This counselor is paid to be this girl’s friend. She is paid to be the authority for this girl. She is supposed to seduce her into a friendship of sorts to sell her the abortion. Every problem this girl has: I don’t want to tell my parents. You don’t have to tell your parents. They don’t have to know. You’re old enough to come in and have it without them knowing. And then the money, and they ask them to go get their money and pay the people back in a year.
6 to 7 weeks
Then the two questions they ask are: Does it hurt? Oh, no. Your uterus is a muscle, and they hold their hand up if they’re seeing them; if not, they tell them over the phone: It’s a cramp to open it; a cramp to close it; it’s a slight cramping sensation. Everybody’s had cramps; every woman in the world. So they think that’s no problem. I can stand that; I’ve been through it before. And then they say: Is it a baby? No, it’s a product of conception; it’s a blood clot; it’s a piece of tissue. They don’t even really tell them it’s a fetus, because, you see, that almost humanizes it too much. It’s never a baby. They can’t admit it themselves when they go in the back and have little 6-week fetuses, babies that they put down disposals, and that’s how we did it in our clinic. The clinics in Dallas use disposals so none of those crazy Pro-Lifers will come and get them out of the trash anymore and bury them the way they did. So, they lie to her. You know, if you look at abortion from the face, I cannot tell you one thing that happens in an abortion clinic that is not a lie. They tell the counselors, and I told the counselors, not to rock the boat; not to answer any questions that they didn’t ask. Get them in here; the faster you can get them in here, the easier it is on them. You concentrate on the woman; you tell them to help her, and you don’t deal with the baby at all.
So they get this girl to come in the clinic, and many times they just get her to come in for a pregnancy test, and if that’s the case then they greet her at the door and they say, Oh, Linda, I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve been waiting for you. This girl doesn’t know they have an appointment book and each counselor has to schedule their appointments an hour apart so she has plenty of time to spend being their “friend” while they’re there. She takes them back; she does the pregnancy test; it doesn’t really matter. If there’s any way they can convince this girl she’s pregnant, she’s going to be pregnant. But they go through this test anyway. She tells her she’s pregnant, and the girl might cry. She may get upset. But they take her into a separate room; they don’t want anyone to see anyone crying in there; it’s supposed to be a great place; we’re supposed to help people in the abortion clinic.
If she has the abortion that day, she goes through one procedure, but if she comes back another day, she just comes in the front door, fills out some forms (very minimal information). Most of the information on that form is name, address, telephone number, and your financial status. So they can find out to what group they need to appeal with their $250,000 per clinic Yellow Page budget.
Then the girl goes back, has some lab work, and then she pays, up-front, for what they have decided the term of pregnancy she is. Cash, Master Card, or Visa–get a Master Card, Visa or American Express. You might consider sending them back because they do charge for abortions, and tell them why you’re sending them back. They will accept those charges. Then the girl goes into this room for counseling and they give her a 6 to 12-page form. This form is written by an abortion attorney. Ours was written by one out of New York, and it was written to confuse the girl to death. It had every possible complication of an abortion you could imagine, and it would take [a doctor] two hours with a medical dictionary to go through it. Words two inches long that no one could possibly understand, and it does its job. It confuses her and she doesn’t ask any questions. She goes back to the two questions: Does it hurt? Is it a baby? And when you have convinced her again and lied to her again that no, it’s not going to hurt, and if she doesn’t have her money–in the State of Texas you have to pay extra to be put to sleep–it’s an extra $100 to $250, depending on how far you are into the pregnancy.
Then she goes into this holding room, waiting for the abortion. And it depends on the day of the week, of course, as to how many people are in there. Saturday is the big day, but it could be a day in the week when there are only five or six people in there waiting. And soon, if there are 30 or 40, especially, they kind of number each other so they know what order they are going to be going out in. They kind of laugh and joke. And if there is one crying in there, you get that one out. You don’t want that one affecting the rest of them.
She is taken back to the procedure room, put on the table, and draped. Her chart is put in the door. Each chart in our clinics was handled with a little coupon on the front. The coupon was for the doctor, because when he walks up to that door for the first time–if you have two or three doctors working, you don’t know which one is going to do the abortion–so, they don’t collect the doctor’s money with the clinic money, they collect it separately and do not show it on any of the records in those clinics. In the four clinics I’ve been in and worked in, they never showed that they collected the doctor’s money at any place. That way, they are independent contractors; you don’t have to be concerned with their malpractice insurance, and you don’t have to report it to IRS. He collects the coupon, puts it in his scrub suit pocket. At the end of the day he goes up and presents his coupons. This is how many I’ve done. And each doctor presents them separately. The girl counts the coupons, figures out how much she owes him, and pays him in cash.
As I said earlier, I have seen doctors walk out after three hours work and split $4,500 between them on a Saturday morning. More, if you go longer into the day, of course. The doctor walks in, sees the patient for the very first time, pats her on the leg, says, Hi, baby, how are you? You call them “baby” so you don’t have to remember their name. And she says, Oh, I’m scared, or, I’m cold. Never anything positive. And he doesn’t really ask her any questions. It’s just get the abortion done. If he discovers that she may be farther along than anyone thought she was, they stop right there, collect the money, and then finish the procedure. If abortion is such a good thing, why don’t they give them away? If abortion is such a good thing, why don’t they go ahead and do the abortion then, and trust you to pay the extra $200 when they’re finished? That’s not the way it is. I’ve never been able to come up with the words to describe the abortion procedure, because, you see, you’re educating people about abortion. You know more about it than the average person. However, no matter how bad you think abortion is, there are no words to describe how bad it really is. It kills the baby. And, yes, I’ve seen sonograms with the baby pulling away from the instruments that are introduced into the vagina. And the woman, the mother, is hurt if she doesn’t have the extra money to be put to sleep, and I’ve seen D&Es through 32 weeks done without the mother being put to sleep.
28 weeks – a month earlier than the latest abortions done a Carol Everett’s clinics
And, yes, they hurt, and they are very painful to the baby. But, yes, they are very, very painful to the woman. I’ve seen six people hold a woman on the table while they did her abortion.
But, they have the abortion and they go to the recovery room, and then there are two reactions in the recovery room. The first one is: I’ve killed my baby. And even then, it amazed me that that was the first time they called it a baby and the first time they called it murder. But, you know, as bad as that sounds, that’s probably the healthiest reaction. That woman is probably going to have the ability to walk out of there and deal with it, and perhaps be healed and go on.
early first trimester
And now, in Europe, where they’ve had abortions for much, much longer than we have, there are some authorities in the Netherlands who are alluding to a spiritual healing that women have to go through before they can completely deal with their abortion. So they’re getting closer day by day by day. But the second reaction is: I am hungry, you kept me in here for four hours and you told me I’d only be here for two; let me out of here. Now that woman is doing what I did. She’s running from her abortion. She’s not dealing with it; she’s choosing to deny it, and she’s the woman that we read all the statistics about, post-abortion syndrome. They say now it’s an average of five years before people actually deal with the fact that, yes, they did kill their baby. And yes, they do have to deal with that. You know, I go back to my own personal healing, which just started a year ago. I was making deals with God. I didn’t want to talk about my own abortion. Then when I finally did deal with it, I cried nonstop for five months because, you see, I killed my baby, and I’m still not through that. And how difficult it is for all these women because, you see, I believe that every woman, even if she’s not physically harmed, is harmed by abortion.
Then what the recovery room personnel do is resell it. They resell them on their next abortion. They don’t say, hey, I’m reselling you so you’ll go out and get pregnant and come back. But they make subtle innuendos that say, you know, this isn’t going to happen again, but, you know we’re always here. And when you leave here you’re going to have a couple of days when you won’t feel so good. You’ll have a couple of days of depression, and that’s just your hormones realigning, and everyone who has a baby has postpartum depression, and don’t worry about it. And there they are encouraging them to suppress their feelings about that abortion.
So they go through this whole gamut of reselling abortion, encouraging suppression, and say, call us if you have a problem. And the girls leave, and they do have problems. The girls that walk out of there, though, are the lucky ones. We were seeing over 500 abortions per month; we were doing the only one-day second or third trimester abortion in the state of Texas. (We didn’t call it third; we called it second.) Meaning that we didn’t use the laminaria. We did all the dilation on that day, and that’s why we were seeing such a tremendous number of complications. We saw complications in the second and third trimester, but we were seeing one per 500 abortions for over a year. Yes, we had a death. A 32 year-old woman with a 17 year-old son and a 2 year-old son. Never made the papers. Her boyfriend felt guilty for his part in the abortion and he didn’t want to deal with it. Her family thought, yes, she had probably had an abortion, but they didn’t want to deal with it. It never came out. No lawsuit.
The 21-year-old that danced in, and I’ll never forget her for as long as I live. She was my son’s age. Danced in to get her “problem” taken care of. Had the extra money to be put to sleep. And you see, my job with two of those doctors was to put my right hand on the baby and hold it while they did the abortion so I could tell them where the head was and where the legs were, and all of that. And I had my hand on that woman’s stomach, and that baby was perfectly inside her uterus; she had been examined by the doctor; and he said, yes, the baby was inside her uterus and everything was fine and she was 24-weeks. And he went in one time, and he pulled out placenta, and he went in the second time and he went through the back of her uterus and pulled her bowel out through her vagina. We put her in the car because we didn’t want an ambulance in front of the abortion clinic and we took her to the hospital. Seven doctors worked on her and they did a colostomy on her. When the reports came back, they said that it was an abdominal pregnancy that had not been in the uterus, and seven doctors and a pathologist concurred with that, and then the hospital wrote off her bill, and there was no lawsuit, ever. She was told that had been a normal complication; it was just amazing that she’d made it that long. And she didn’t know any better. And then the girl that the doctors decided had a fibroid tumor at the back of her uterus. That’s a highly common tumor that’s very rarely malignant. And the two doctors decided they were just going to pull this out after she had her abortion, and they didn’t know they were pulling on the back of her uterus, and they pulled the uterus out wrong-side-out of a 21- year-old; she had a hysterectomy.
Those are the ones that I remember. Those are the ones that bother me. Those are the ones that I have to go through and deal with and be healed of constantly. Because, you see, it was like the mothers were presenting their babies to be killed. And it was okay to kill 500 babies a month. But when we started killing or maiming a mother for each 500 babies, even I couldn’t handle that.
12 weeks
There are two problems that are going on that we might be able to do something with, too. That is, that abortion clinics, if they have someone that does present themselves thinking they’re pregnant and of course the test show they’re not; that they’re going to sell that abortion to that non-pregnant woman. And every time that you are standing in front of an abortion clinic, you are holding a light on inside that clinic. You are holding those people accountable and that day they are less likely to do the woman who is not pregnant because they’re scared of you. They think these crazy Pro-Lifers are going to run in, chain themselves to the table. We had seven locks or something from the front door to the back. They are less likely to do that woman who is too far along that day too, because, you see, when the babies are so big they don’t come apart like the others. Their muscle structure is strong that the heads come off from the body, and you can’t dispose of those in the disposal. You have to put those in the trash. And we used to take ours over to opposition abortion clinics’ trash and hope they’d be found there.
second trimester
But every time you’re in front, you’re holding that light on. They slow down. An abortionist who brags and thinks he can do eight to ten, maybe even twelve abortions an hour, with a picketer in front of him, will slow down. Do four, six, three, something–but he’ll slow down. He’s afraid of you.
If there is good medical care inside an abortuary, the day you’re standing out there is the day it happens. And you asked me how I feel about what you do? First of all, in Dallas, Texas, we have a guy named Winston Wilder, and thank you, Lord, for Winston. When I finally got over the right side… That’s another thing, you don’t see the defectors from the Pro-Life side to the abortion side, did you ever notice that? The defection’s this way, and there are a lot of them. Winston and I sat down and I gave him all the names, addresses, telephone numbers, business offices (because many times their partners do not even know they do abortions). We had one guy called in from the Bahamas because they suddenly started picketing his office, and his partner didn’t know he did abortions in the clinics. At their private homes, many times their wives do not know they do abortions. Many times their mother-in-law doesn’t know they’re doing abortions. Many times the maid doesn’t know they’re doing abortions. Their neighbors, of course, rarely know. But that’s the most effective thing.
Picket them where they live. The clinics, yes, because it is my firm conviction that every day abortion is done and we’re not standing in front of the abortion clinic, that we are held accountable. We must be there doing what they say that we should do.”
Also from Carol Everett:
Q.: did you operate the clinic seven days a week?
A.: yes. Sunday was our most profitable day. Most women want to get in and get out quickly. They know abortion is wrong, especially on Sunday, so they hurried through. Women don’t ask questions on Sunday. You can work with a skeleton staff because the women who come in for an abortion on Sunday mean business. We would do 15 to 20 (abortions) on Sunday in 2 to 3 hours! While everybody else was at church, we were doing abortions!”
…
Q.: was there any follow-up counseling?
A.: we told them that it would be available, however, we used some techniques in the recovery room to discourage further contact except for future abortions. We told them, ” in about 7 to 10 days you are going to feel depressed for a couple of days. Don’t worry about that. When a woman has a baby, she has a couple of days of postpartum depression. You will have that, too. It’s just your body figuring out that you are not pregnant, and your hormones are realigning.” So when the woman starts to deal with the reality that ” I killed my baby”, she thinks it is normal because of the hormone activity. She is encouraged repress these natural feelings. Yet, a 13-year-old girl came in for a two-week checkup. The checkup is not as much to check them, as it is to make sure you didn’t miss a pregnancy. She didn’t come out of the room for a long period of time. She was slitting her wrists.
From “what I saw in the abortion industry” by Carol Everett Easton publishing company 1988 (pamphlet)
Someone asked if I had heard about the doctor in Orlando who has been in a lot of trouble, and when I searched for news about it, I realized it was James Pendergraft, the doctor who did my abortions.
He has now had his medical license suspended for the FOURTH time, this time for performing late-term abortions past the time when they are legal.
When I saw a picture of the clinic, I crumbled. When I saw a picture of the doctor, I began weeping and I couldn’t stop.
Every sight, every sound, every feeling came back. I can still remember the poster on the ceiling. It was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep from the anesthesia, and the first thing I saw when I woke up.
The article was full of stories about women like me…ones who have suffered for months, even years, because of incomplete abortions.
There was a woman who was awake and saw her baby being pulled from her as his body fell apart in the doctor’s hands. They had her frantic 911 call as she decided she wanted the baby to live after seeing that it actually IS a baby, but no one at the clinic would help. By the time the ambulance arrived, the baby was dead.
It’s an uncomfortable subject…because if I call it a baby, if I admit that it was a boy or a girl who had 10 fingers and 10 toes and a life that was already mapped out by God, then I am calling myself a killer. If I talk about it, blog about it, pray about it, then that makes it real.
But just when I think I’ve pushed the memories far enough behind that they won’t catch up with me, there they are again.
The self-hatred is paralyzing. It lurks closely and tells me that I don’t deserve happiness. The guilt is suffocating. It has affected every relationship I have. I can’t trust or attempt intimacy.
I would take a bullet for my out-of-the-womb children. Why didn’t I protect the ones inside?
I have given up hope that the past could have been different. I cannot change what I did. Every Bible study, counseling session, and prayer seems to just be a band-aid over a wound that will NEVER heal.
So, I will be a voice for my children who only know heaven. I will be a voice for the millions of women who live in regret, guilt, self-hatred and fear of being “found out”. I will be painfully honest about every feeling I have, and I will stand up for life even when it’s unpopular and politically incorrect. So, please spare me your pro-life/pro-choice arguments. I know what I saw. I know how I feel. I will NEVER be the same. I will NEVER get over it.
And if I don’t take this pain and make it my purpose, I think it might kill me.
Christie writes her testimony as a letter to another woman considering an abortion.
Hello from a fellow Texan! I want to make this short, but it may not turn out that way. Someone who cares very deeply for you asked me to write this letter to you so here goes:
You are so blessed to have been raised in a loving family and in a church and taught right from wrong; I hope you know that first and far most. Here is my story.
I was raised in a very large family nine children in all and we pretty much had no rules and no responsibility growing up. I could do whatever I wanted as a teen and my parents never showed me love, so I went looking for it. (In all the wrong places) I thought guys liked me back then, but now looking back, I know they just thought I was “easy.”
At 16 years of age I was running around with multiple guys thinking I was getting “love” from them. All I got was an unwanted pregnancy. I couldn’t tell my mother so I told my sister- of course she told my mom. The first one-on-one conversation I ever had with my mother was the day she confronted me.
It was one of the best (I thought) days of my life. She said I would have an abortion. I was so happy! I wouldn’t be fat, I wouldn’t bear the shame, and no one would know what I did so off to the abortion clinic we went
I think I was 12 weeks pregnant when this happened and the nurse gave me a sonogram and told me is wasn’t a “baby” yet just a blob of tissue. So my mom signed some papers and off to the “room.” I won’t go into the gory details of the procedure, but it was probably worse than being raped by a stranger.
I was laying there with some poster on the ceiling with a calm ocean scene. As he started the machine all I could think of was this is wrong! This is wrong! This is wrong!
As he started the procedure, I wanted to change my mind but it was too late. The doctor began to remove the “tissue” from my body. The pain in my abdomen was more than I could bear and lasted about 45 minutes. The very sound of what I heard that day still haunts me. He finished and said it was over. I lay there five minutes because I had been in such pain and was glad it was over. I got up and began to dress. I was bleeding very badly. I wasn’t up two minutes and the nausea started. I spent three hours throwing up and you can’t eat or drink anything the night before or that morning, so it was that really dry throw-up that chokes you because there is nothing to throw up… I went home and slept because I was so tired from the procedure and throwing up so long.
Fast forward 20 years… I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior…I begin to read my Bible daily… I get to Jeremiah 1:4&5. The word of the lord talking to Jeremiah
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”
“Before you were born I set you apart”
I dropped my Bible on the floor… I was shocked at what I read. I began to weep profusely, The worst cry I have ever had in my entire life. God opened my eyes to what I had done. I had taken one of his creations and allowed a doctor to vacuum that beautiful creation out of my body and throw into the garbage.
I was totally depressed for years. I knew God had forgiven me, but my guilt and shame was too much to bear. So I started self medication to escape the pain. Drinking drugs you name it I did it all. I should have died. I was waking up in strange places, not remembering how I got home, not remembering driving home. Etc.
Fast forward 10 years- I have children of my own and am enjoying my life but every time I look at them I can’t help but wonder what could have been. I look at an empty dining room chair and I think of that child so many situations make me think of that day. It is forever haunting still after 20 years.
I am now going on 47 years of age and my kids are almost grown. TO THIS DAY THAT ABORTION HAUNTS ME. I have dreams about it I hate myself for it. I regret it. I wonder what he or she would have looked like- Every Birthday one of my kids have I wonder how old that child I killed would be. How could I have done it? Why didn’t someone warn me? Babies are fully formed in just a few weeks. If they had told me that my abortion would cause depression, anxiety, guilt, sleeplessness, endless guilt, drunkenness, sadness, regret, shame, remorse. I never would have done it.
I know God put me in touch with you for just this reason. Please don’t make the mistake I made. You will regret it for the rest of your life. There are so many of us that we even have groups we belong to and wear t-shirts saying “I regret my abortion” when we go to pro life rallies.
I know you are surrounded by people who will support you and I never had that my mom made me. Please take a good look around you and count your blessings. I pray that my letter will help open your eyes to a different view on what you may choose to do, but remember we have consequences to our actions.
God Bless
From Priests for Life.
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