Criminal Intimacy: Colorado’s complicated history with abortion

Maeve Conran
August 6, 2025
Podcast series in 3 parts (24 to 34 minutes each)

Criminal Intimacy is a limited series podcast by Abby O’Brien that explores Colorado’s complicated history with abortion. It tells the story of two women in 1870s Colorado — one with a tragic fate and one who took the blame. Fredricka Baunn, died in 1871 following an abortion, and Dr. Mary Solander, Colorado’s first licensed female doctor and a respected physician in the area, was found guilty of manslaughter for Fredricka’s death.

Fredricka Baunn had been impregnated by Clement Knau, a married man who did not want the child.

Continued: https://kgnu.org/criminal-intimacy-colorados-complicated-history-with-abortion/

06.08.2025

Interviews/Podcasts

Abby O'Brien

Colorado Doula Project

Criminal Intimacy

Dr. Mary Solander

Fredicka Baunn

Gina Martinez Valentina

history of abortion

history of abortion in Colorado

Late abortions are rare. The US just lost a clinic that offered the procedure for over 50 years

By KIMBERLEE KRUESI
May 11, 2025

To fellow travelers, Hannah Brehm likely looked like she was taking a belated babymoon well into her third trimester.

But she and her husband had received a crushing diagnosis: Their baby’s brain was not developing properly, upending their wanted pregnancy. Medical experts warned moving forward would likely mean her son would know only pain and suffering. The Minnesota couple wasn’t going to take that chance.

Instead, they went to Colorado, where for decades the Boulder Abortion Clinic served as a resource for women who looked to terminate their pregnancies in the second or third trimester because of medical reasons, like Brehm, or other circumstances.

Continued: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-late-trimester-boulder-clinic-dobbs-56ff9a6998465e4f99b12a80e60b675c

Boulder clinic that offered abortions in later pregnancy closes after decades of targeted threats

Dr. Warren Hern, who opened Colorado’s first private, nonprofit abortion clinic in the 1970s, is retiring

Jennifer Brown
Apr 23, 2025

A 50-year-old Boulder abortion clinic that was criticized and threatened with violence over the decades for performing abortions in later pregnancy has closed.

Boulder Abortion Clinic is no longer scheduling patients at a time when Colorado is seeing an increase in abortions for people who travel from states where the procedure has been restricted. Dr. Warren Hern, who began providing abortions in Colorado more than 50 years ago, announced the closure in a post on the clinic’s website in which he thanked his staff for their courage.

Continued: https://coloradosun.com/2025/04/23/boulder-clinic-that-offered-abortions-in-later-pregnancy-closes-after-decades-of-targeted-threats/

23.04.2025

News

Boulder Abortion Clinic

The Legacy of Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion Provider, Women’s Health Advocate and Target of Hate

1/17/2025
by Carole Joffe, Ms. Magazine

After more than 50 years of providing abortions, Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo., will retire on Jan. 22, 2025. For years, he has been one of the most high-profile abortion doctors in the United States—one of only a handful of providers to perform abortions in the late second trimester and third trimester of pregnancy.

…In a letter to Ms. executive editor Kathy Spillar reflecting on his five-plus decades in medicine, Hern described his role and his clinic as “providing the safest, most compassionate and highest quality outpatient abortion services available anywhere.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/01/17/warren-hern-late-abortion-care/

Abortion rights ballot measures pass in 7 states, fail in 3 others

Defeats in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota ended an unbroken post-Roe ballot measure winning streak for reproductive rights advocates.

Nov. 6, 2024
By Adam Edelman

Constitutional amendments to protect or expand abortion rights passed in seven of the 10 states where they appeared on the ballot Tuesday, NBC News projects.

Voters in Arizona and Missouri approved ballot initiatives that will effectively protect abortion rights until fetal viability and undo existing abortion laws on the books. But voters in Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota rejected proposed amendments that would have done the same — becoming the first pro-abortion-rights ballot measures to fail since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/abortion-rights-ballot-measures-pass-7-states-fail-3-others-rcna178718

Anguish, gratitude and fear of violence at a Colorado clinic for late abortions

Women are increasingly arriving at the Boulder Abortion Clinic, one of the few in the U.S. providing abortion services at or after 28 weeks of pregnancy, when their lives are in danger.

Sept. 10, 2024
By Dasha Burns, Abigail Brooks and Jason Kane

BOULDER, Colo. — Behind bullet-proof doors in a generic office park is one of only five clinics in the country where women can access the rarest — and most controversial — abortion procedures.

Women come here desperate, says Dr. Warren Hern, who has run the Boulder Abortion Clinic since 1975.
“It ranges from the 12-year-old kid who’s pregnant from her stepfather to the 45-year-old woman who desperately wants to have a baby and finds out that she has a fatal illness that is incompatible with being pregnant,” he says.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/anguish-gratitude-fear-violence-colorado-clinic-late-abortions-rcna170451

10.09.2024

Commentary

Boulder Abortion Clinic

Dr. Warren Hern

fatal fetal abnormalities

later abortions

third-trimester abortion

Library archives uncover long-lost history of Colorado women dying trying to get an abortion before it was legal

By John Daley
Mar. 7, 2024

Abortion access — some states have outlawed it, others have seen scores of patients from out of state — has been in the news since the U.S. Supreme Court repealed the Constitutional right to an abortion two years ago. But looking back through history shows that unplanned pregnancies and access to abortions have been in the news for a long, long time.

More than a century ago, readers of the Rocky Mountain News learned about the death of a young woman who worked in a shop named Maude, who was trying to terminate a pregnancy. A woman named Mrs. Proctor, the wife of the manager of a “remedy company,” was charged with manslaughter in Maude’s death.

Continued: https://www.cpr.org/2024/03/07/denver-public-library-history-of-abortion-access-in-colorado/

Legislators in 49 states ask SCOTUS to preserve access to abortion pill

34 Colorado lawmakers sign amicus brief

BY: KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS
OCTOBER 13, 2023

A group of more than 600 Democratic legislators from 49 states, including 34 from Colorado, have signed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging the justices to overturn an appellate court decision that would roll back access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used to safely terminate early pregnancies and treat miscarriages.

The amicus brief, also called a “friend of the court” brief, was organized by State Innovation Exchange’s Reproductive Freedom Leadership Council and assembled over the past week, said Jennifer Driver, the group’s senior director of reproductive rights. Driver said State Innovation Exchange, also known as SiX, provides tools and resources for state legislators to advocate for progressive public policies after being elected to office.

Continued: https://coloradonewsline.com/2023/10/13/legislators-in-49-states-ask-scotus-to-preserve-access-to-abortion-pill/

USA – This Case Could Usher in a Fresh Wave of Abortion Clinic Harassment

Conservatives want the Supreme Court to overturn one of the last bits of precedent protecting abortion providers and their patients from harassment.

JUL 27, 2023
JESSICA MASON PIEKLO, Rewire News

In the year following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion providers and patients saw a terrifying escalation in threats and acts of violence against them. As I first reported in this space two months ago, incidents like stalking were up a horrific 229 percent after the Supreme Court struck down Roe. The violence and intimidation is almost too much to wrap your head around.

But what if I told you that the Becket Fund, a conservative legal advocacy organization, could make the entire situation much, much worse?

Continued: https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2023/07/27/this-case-could-usher-in-a-fresh-wave-of-abortion-clinic-harassment/

27.07.2023

Colorado: Lessons from a sanctuary state for abortion in the US

In this corner of the West, some of the most progressive laws in the country have been passed in response to the Supreme Court ruling that struck down ‘Roe vs Wade.’ It is the fruit of years of work by activists and Democratic politicians

Iker Seisdedos
JUL 10, 2023

The alarm that shook activist Aurea Bolaños into action was the Texas Heartbeat Act, which was passed in September 2021. Mirroring many rules that would follow, it banned abortions as early as six weeks of pregnancy, when most women do not yet know they are pregnant.

This was nine months before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs Wade, the landmark ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973. Texas’ proximity to Colorado — the states share a border with Oklahoma, which followed with a similar abortion ban — prompted Bolaños, along with other activists and lawyers, to ask what legal safeguards protected reproductive freedom in Colorado. “The answer was: none,” she told EL PAÍS from an office in downtown Denver.

Continued: https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-07-10/colorado-lessons-from-a-sanctuary-state-for-abortion-in-the-us.html