Ann Gainey, director of the Gainesville Care Center, says it’s always easier to prevent a problem than to solve one.

Prevention is a key component to the services offered by the anti-abortion, nonprofit Christian ministry, which serves about 1,000 people each year at its Gainesville office. Gainey said the center’s services include "prevention, intervention and reconciliation," and part of the center’s mission is to "educate people to make godly sexual decisions." The center also offers pregnancy tests, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, resources for pregnant couples and a post-abortion support class.

Tonight, the center will host the Gainesville Care Center Celebration Fundraiser, an annual banquet that usually raises about half of the center’s annual budget. The keynote speaker is Carol Everett, a former abortion clinic owner and author of "Blood Money: Getting Rich Off a Woman’s Right to Choose."

Gainey said Everett was part owner of four abortion clinics between 1977 and 1983.

"She said during that time, she oversaw over 35,000 abortions. Then she became a Christian, and decided, you know, this certainly wasn’t what she wanted to continue doing with her life," Gainey said. "She also had an abortion herself, and so she can speak to the healing only God can give when we do things we later regret."

Everett said her abortion led her to work in abortion clinics.

"I had an abortion, couldn’t deal with the guilt, (and) found that if I sold abortions to other women, in some strange, very sick way, if (other women were) OK, I was OK, and I evolved into the abortion business," Everett said.

When she wasn’t making enough money working for other people, Everett said she became part owner of her own abortion clinics.

"Our goal was 35 abortions (per month,)" Everett said.

Everett said she felt uncomfortable with her job from the beginning.

"We know and we knew before Roe v. Wade, that at the moment those two cells join, a life begins, and the heart is beating by the time most women know they’re pregnant. Nineteen, 21 days after conception, that baby has a heartbeat," said Everett.

Everett said how her clinics treated women also led to her leaving the abortion industry.

"We were killing or maiming one woman a month," Everett said. "As we took them across town to those hospitals, (I realized that) they were my children’s age."

After she eventually became "extremely uncomfortable" with what she was doing, Everett said she prayed for a way out.

She said her chance came when a local CBS affiliate exposed the fact that her clinics were "attempting to do abortions on women that weren’t pregnant."

She then quit her job, and began a ministry of speaking out against abortion.

At tonight’s fundraiser, Everett said she will "compare the two: the abortion industry and (the Gainesville Care Center)."

Everett said she will also give fundraiser attendees an inside look at how abortion clinics work.

"I will take them (on) a verbal walk through an abortion clinic so they realize how abortions are being marketed to their children and the world, and then I’m going to talk about what happens briefly inside the abortion business, and then I’m going to talk about this ministry and how it offers the full length of choices," she said.

Registration is closed for the fundraiser, but Gainey said some tickets may be available due to cancellations. Call 770-535-1413 or come to the banquet to check for cancellations.