EX-ABORTION PROVIDER WANTS CLINICS CLOSED

Carol Everett wanted to be a millionaire and developed a plan to help her achieve that goal by 1984.

But after years of marketing and selling abortions to young girls, Everett now wants to help regulate abortion clinics.

"I have not always been on the right side," she told a crowd of 500 gathered in Cape Girardeau Thursday night. "For many years I was on the wrong side."

Everett was guest speaker at the Vitae Society fund-raising banquet at the Holiday Inn Convention Center.

The society, whose name in Latin means life, is launching an informational campaign against abortion by using television and radio commercials in local markets.

During her years as an abortion clinic operator in Dallas, Texas, Everett said many clinics operated on a marketing strategy much like a business selling a product would.

"We had goals," she said of the industry. Everett, who is not a doctor, said the clinic's goal was to perform three to five abortions per girl between the ages of 13 to 18.

She earned $25 for every abortion performed at her clinics.

"In my last month there were 545 abortions," she said. "That's $13,625, and that was a bad month."

Everett left the abortion industry after a religious conversion. She now speaks on the anti-abortion circuit.

Young girls wouldn't hear about abortion if there wasn't a crisis pregnancy, she said. "Abstinence still works every time."

Everett told stories about young women who had died within the last year of complications from abortions. "Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's safe," she said.

"I don't just want to clean up the industry," she said. "I want to regulate it because when you regulate it they go away. With some minimal standards, you can close 50 percent of the clinics."

The Vitae Society hopes anti-abortion commercials will help reduce the number of abortions in Missouri by 2000.

Carl Landwher, president of the organization, said commercials have been running on Cape Girardeau television stations since early October and will continue throughout the year.

Donations from Cape Girardeau resident Wanda Drury will provide a month's worth of air time. A similar donation from the Knights of Columbus in Missouri will buy additional air time at local stations, he said.

"Our challenge is to keep the issue alive so that people can begin seeing that life is a gift," Landwher said.