Editor’s Note: Today Carol Everett is committed to sharing life-affirming options with women facing unintended pregnancy. But prior to becoming a pro-life advocate, Carol owned and operated several abortion clinics. Everett, the author of Blood Money (a book about the abortion industry) was interviewed on FamilyLife Today by radio host Dennis Rainey, and his co-host, Bob Lepine, about her transformed life. The following Q&A is adapted from this interview:

Dennis: You say in your book that nothing of what is said to a young lady coming into one of these abortion providers is the truth. Are you saying it’s all a lie?

Carol: If they told women the truth, women would flee. If they told her it was a baby, she would not stand there to take her baby’s life. If they told her the truth, that it was an unnatural interruption of a natural process, and it’s excruciatingly painful, she would leave.

Bob: What happened after your abortion?

Carol: The moment the anesthesia wore off, the very first thought was, “I have killed my baby.” I had taken the life of my unborn child, this baby I was supposed to nurture and protect. And I remember thinking clearly, there is no one I can tell that I killed my baby, that I’m a murderer.

Dennis: Is that because of the shame you were feeling?

Carol: It was shame and guilt and remorse—unbelievable darkness.

Dennis: Is that typical of a woman as the painkiller wears off and as the physical pain sets in?

Carol: Some women experience instant relief because they think the problem is over, only to realize very soon that their problems have only started. And then you have the women who instantly realize they killed their child and start to grieve and deal with that. But society encourages us to hide those feelings.

Dennis: What was it like to walk out of that hospital that day?

Carol: I felt very alone. I felt guilty … as if I should be put in prison. I rushed home expecting surely my husband will understand my feelings, because he participated in this decision. He just kept saying we made the best choice we could, and we need to go on.

Dennis: If you’d had a good, clear, compassionate voice in the culture speaking to you, do you think it would have made any difference?

Carol: I looked for someone to say to me, “This is wrong.” If any one person had said, “You don’t have to do this,” I would have stopped. Because deep in my heart I wanted to, but there was no one there. I take full responsibility for what I did, but today I’d like to see people be that voice and say to that woman, “You don’t have to walk through that door. There is help and hope, and I’ll walk through this with you.”

Bob: There are a lot of women who have gone through an abortion. What do you say to those women today?

Carol: I say that there is hope, and the hope is Jesus Christ, who was the ultimate unplanned pregnancy, and yet went to the cross for my sins and yours. And because of Him, we can apply Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation for those who are Christ Jesus,” and 1 John 1:9, “If you confess and repent of your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive.” And we can walk free because of what He did.

Bob: Carol, your husband didn’t want you to have the baby. In fact, he insisted that you terminate the pregnancy, and you did. That began a downward spiral in your life, didn’t it?

Carol: Yes. Nothing worked in my life. I was miserable. I found myself at a psychiatrist every day. I was trying to find something that worked, and I finally found one thing that did. Every time I sold another woman a pregnancy termination, in some sick, twisted way, if that woman was okay perhaps I was okay.

Bob: Now, had you gone to work for an abortion provider?

Carol: I was the first woman in medical supply sales in Dallas, Texas. I worked for a man who paid me a $25 commission for sending clients to his abortion clinics.

Dennis: And how did you get these clients?

Carol: I was calling on doctors. I would just tell the doctor, “I have a place to send women if you need a referral.” They would give it to me, and I would send them in.

Dennis: This is an industry that was spiraling out of control, growing rapidly. Did you jump in and help start a partnership with a physician?

Carol: With the man who did my pregnancy termination.

Bob: And so from being paid a finder’s fee, you actually became more entrepreneurial. You said at some level this was cathartic for you. Was this kind of covering over some of the guilt and depression you were feeling?

Carol: Yes, it was. We more than doubled the business for the man I worked for. He wouldn’t share that money with me, so I took his best provider, my old doctor, the one who did my own termination, and we started our own clinic.

Dennis: And how many abortions did you do that first month?

Carol: Forty-five. I was paid $25 for each procedure, and we grew every month.

Dennis: And there would have been how much money, at that point, coming in?

Carol: You put $250,000 in the bank every month for 500 terminations. My goal was to be a millionaire.

Dennis: What was the point where God got your attention?

Carol: Well, as we attempted to expand our pregnancy termination business, we needed help from a financial standpoint. I met a man, a very strange man, who agreed to meet with the owners of the clinic.

Dennis: And it just happened that he was a preacher.

Carol: Yes.

Bob: Did you know that when you hired him?

Carol: No. He had a business consulting record that was astounding. He was very successful. We didn’t know he put Scriptures into place … He was the pastor of a church, and he had a parachurch ministry. Both the board of his ministry and the deacons of his church prayed and believed that God had called him [to consult with our clinic] because there was someone that God wanted out of there … He believed there was one person that God wanted out, and that that person would walk out in 30 days.

I asked him, “What are you doing in this situation?” He said, “God sent me.”

I said, “Wait a minute, let me tell you about God.” I quickly told him I was a Christian, I had a Bible in the top right-hand drawer of my desk, I tithed on all that money.

He told me that I couldn’t be good enough, I couldn’t work hard enough … as a matter of fact, I couldn’t buy my way to heaven. But because God loved me so much, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for my sins, and by this simple act of faith in Christ as my Lord and Savior, my life could change.

The pastor said to me, “You know, I wouldn’t be much of a salesman if I didn’t ask you if you wanted to pray that prayer and ask Jesus Christ to come into your life.”

I said yes. I prayed that prayer to shut that man up.

It was the weirdest prayer I’d ever heard at that time in my life: “Dear God, I am a sinner. Please forgive me of my sins. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to die for my sins. Riding on the throne of my heart is the Lord and Savior. Make me a worker in Your vineyard. Amen.”

Dennis: You prayed that?

Carol: I prayed that and left laughing because this man thought I was going to leave all this money and go to work in a vineyard. I laughed all the way back to the clinic, and when I got there, something had happened. For the first time, I walked in, and those girls were all sitting in a corner crying. I’d never seen that before.

Rather than running back and rushing everyone through, I started taking these girls into my office and talking them out of having a termination. Simple things: “Your parents will not kill you. Your parents will not hate you; they will not kick you out. Let me go home with you and help you talk to your parents.”

Dennis: Now, do you remember the first girl you talked to?

Carol: Vaguely, but I remember there were three that day.

Dennis: That you talked out of having an abortion?

Carol: Yes. I fell to my knees from the floor of that abortion clinic and said, “Lord, if there is a Lord, if this is not where you want me, hit me over the head with a 2x4.”

Bob: What happened?

Carol: We were caught by Channel 4, the CBS affiliate in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, attempting to do pregnancy terminations on women who were not pregnant.

Bob: You were doing that routinely?

Carol: Routinely, but we got caught this time.

Bob: Do you think that practice still exists in the abortion industry?

Carol: Absolutely … It’s been documented all over the country, not just in Dallas.

Dennis: What did they do? Set you up with a woman who wasn’t pregnant?

Carol: Three.

Dennis: And had a hidden camera?

Carol: Sent her to the doctor to be certain she wasn’t pregnant; put cameras outside so you could get her going in; put a recorder in her purse so it was recorded. It was very, very clear.

Dennis: They performed a procedure on her at that point?

Carol: She left before they were going to but [our clinic told her], “Yup, you’re pregnant. There it is, babe, you ready to do it today? We can take care of your little problem.”

And she would say, “No, I think I’ll wait.”

Dennis: The series started 27 days after you met the preacher. He had been praying and sensed from God that there was someone in that clinic who needed out within 30 days.

Carol: On the 30th day (I didn’t realize until years later it was the 30th day) I moved my personal effects out [of the office] and left.

Dennis: Carol, you had prayed a prayer asking God to forgive you. I want to know, when did you realize you were forgiven for the deaths of 35,000 babies?

Carol: God only gives you what you can handle when you can handle it. About six months after I walked out of the clinic, He let me find the 139th Psalm. And as I read those words about how the days of our lives are ordained for us, I remembered those babies [who had been aborted], and I realized that God had intended every one of those babies for a life. And that’s when I had to start dealing with the fact that I’d been involved in the murder of 35,000 babies.

Dennis: If you can’t forgive yourself, you are also declaring Jesus’ words are not true when He said, “It is finished.” So we’re really left to take Him at His Word and to embrace the forgiveness that He offers to us. But that’s a choice, isn’t it, Carol?

Carol: Yes, it is, and it’s a choice we must make daily, because you live with that sin, and you pile that sin on top of sin. And you believe lie after lie, and you have to pull each one back and reconcile it to the cross.

You have to say, “Okay, His blood took care of this … and this … and this.” It’s a process to understand.

After Carol left the abortion industry, she was contacted by a representative from a right-to-life organization. “We’ve been praying for God to send someone to help us,” he said. “Someone who has first-hand experience in the abortion industry. Would you be willing to talk with us?”

Carol agreed. That conversation was the beginning of her pro-life advocacy. As she says in her book Blood Money, “I exchanged thirty-eight years of destructive living for life as a woker in God’s vineyard.” 

Adapted from transcripts of FamilyLife Today broadcast Blood Money. All rights reserved.

Carol Everett founded The Heidi Group in 1995. Uniquely understanding unplanned pregnancies, Carol has committed her life’s work to helping women facing an unintended pregnancy with positive life affirming options.