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

Prominent Colorado abortion provider calls Dobbs decision ‘throwback to another century’

Dr. Warren Hern, who has performed thousands of abortions in nearly 50 years of practice, says, ‘This is the worst situation I’ve seen in this country in my life.’

By Rebekah Sager
June 01, 2023

For nearly five decades, Dr. Warren Hern has specialized in providing abortions to people who need them in the late stages of pregnancy. He says he is unwavering in his commitment to helping people obtain abortion care.

Hern tells the American Independent Foundation that pregnant people travel to his Boulder, Colorado, office because they know he will provide abortions in the first, second, or third trimester if needed.

Continued: https://americanindependent.com/prominent-abortion-provider-dobbs-decision-throwback/

01.06.2023

Commentary

Deborah Dorbert

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

USA – THE ABORTION ABSOLUTIST

Warren Hern has been performing late abortions for half a century. After Roe, he is as busy with patients as ever.

By Elaine Godfrey
MAY 12, 2023

The sky above Boulder was dark when the abortion doctor picked me up for dinner. I had to squint to recognize Warren Hern in his thick aviator glasses and fur-trapper hat.

At the restaurant—a kitschy Italian spot along a pedestrian mall—Hern ignored the table the waiter offered us, pointed at one in the corner, and clomped over in his heavy hiking boots. He’d like to order right away, he said: the osso buco and a glass of Spanish red. How long will that take?

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2023/05/dr-warren-hern-abortion-post-roe/674000/

Colorado becomes the first state to ban controversial abortion pill reversals

As pills emerge as the latest front in the war over abortion, the practice of administering progesterone after mifepristone may soon be labeled as ‘medical misconduct’ in the state.

Claire Cleveland, KFF Health News
May 3, 2023

In Glenwood Springs, Colorado, registered nurse Katie Laven answers calls from people who’ve started the two-pill medication abortion regimen and want to stop the process.

“They are just in turmoil,” said Laven, who works at the Abortion Pill Rescue Network and answers some of the roughly 150 calls it says come in each month. “They feel like, ‘Well, maybe an abortion would make it better.’ And then they take the abortion pill and they’re like, ‘I don’t feel better. In fact, I feel much worse that I did that.’”

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/05/colorado-bans-abortion-pill-reversals/