Texas Insider

Rep Wayne Christian recently filed HB 3152, “Relating to prohibiting the performance of an abortion on a woman who is not known to be pregnant; providing penalties.”

Patricia Kilday Hart over at the Burkablog ran with the story, even dropping by Christian’s office to ask a few questions. But it seems that’s as far as Patricia got. Her posted article is void of serious content and ignores some important facts on the issue.

For instance, Patricia writes, “It seems [Christian's] office has been made aware that some abortion providers used to pretend to perform abortions on young women for the purpose of scamming the government for public abortion funds.”

It was surprising to read that public abortion funding was going to workers performing fake abortions. I find that alone to be quite newsworthy. However with five minutes of research I discovered no public money was involved.

So to get a better sense of the other side of the story, and discover how Christian’s office became aware of this situation, I spoke with Carol Everett, a woman involved in the abortion industry for six years who worked completely on commission for abortions completed.

Carol currently oversees a West Dallas based non-profit pre-natal clinic for women who have no insurance or are awaiting Medicaid approval.

Carol’s story on the matter is as follows:

I was involved in the abortion industry for six years, working on a straight commission – paid only for the abortions completed by our clinics.  Nine abortionists worked at our two clinics earning commissions from 1/3 of the fee in the first trimester to ½ of the fee for the second and third trimester abortions.  (Abortions nationally range from $300 to $8,000. Ten to twelve first trimester abortions can be performed in one hour.  Second and third trimester abortions usually are completed at the rate of three or less per hour.)

Our clinics were caught by Channel  4 in Dallas attempting to perform abortions on women who were not pregnant.  News reporters had laboratory tests to prove that they were not pregnant and came in our clinics to see if we would attempt to perform abortions on them even though they clearly were not pregnant.  We had been tipped off but no one can control nine abortionists working on a straight commission.  We were caught red-handed and Channel 4 ran the news story for five days.

Women who are not pregnant and sold an abortion must undergo some sort of procedure in order for the abortionist to collect his commission.  There is nothing fake about the procedure.  To provide a specimen, the abortionist dilates the cervix, scrapes out some of the lining of the woman’s uterus, performs his own tissue check (normally a tech performs the tissue checks) and charts the specimen as six to eight weeks.

In spite of all the publicity, not one local, state, or federal entity investigated our clinics.  Performing an abortion on a woman who is not pregnant is legal.  Representative Christian learned of this assault on women and filed a bill to protect the health of women who might seek an abortion.

The point of this article is not to lead anyone to a specific conclusion about the merit of the HB 3152, but rather that readers have a better understanding of the purpose and history behind the bill before drawing any conclusions, especially if those conclusions came after reading the Burkablog.