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/

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

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/

As U.S. abortion bans take midterm centre stage, a clinic helping Canadians faces a crunch

By Rachel Gilmore Global News
November 3, 2022

Dr. Warren Hern has clear memories from the years before Roe v. Wade granted women the right to an abortion.

He and his medical school classmates would stay up all night caring for sick women. At first, he said he didn’t understand why they were so ill. Then he learned the women had all tried to get illegal, unsafe abortions — and many were dying as a result.

Continued: https://globalnews.ca/news/9244370/abortion-midterms-united-states-canada/

Demand for Colorado abortion care spikes as out-of-state patients face desperate circumstances

KUNC | By Robyn Vincent
Published August 5, 2022

On a recent Saturday morning in Boulder, thousands of people marched through the streets to protest the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Their voices were angry and hoarse as they chanted “abortion rights are human rights!” and “my body, my choice!” Motorists honked and raised their fists as the protesters clogged the sidewalks.

Moments before, abortion provider Dr. Kelly Peters told the crowd that Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center has been inundated with calls since Roe was overturned.

Continued; https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/open-spaces/2022-08-05/demand-for-colorado-abortion-care-spikes-as-out-of-state-patients-face-desperate-circumstances

“Women Are Going to Die”: A Late Abortion Doctor on the Dangers of Post-Roe America

Abigail Weinberg
July 19, 2022

Abortions that occur after 21 weeks gestation are vanishingly rare, accounting for about 1 percent of all abortions nationwide. The doctors who perform abortions later in pregnancy are even rarer: The 2013 documentary After Tiller cited just four doctors in the United States who performed abortions in the third trimester.

One of them is Dr. Warren Hern. He has operated in Boulder, Colorado, for decades, despite a constant onslaught of violence and harassment.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/warren-hern-boulder-late-abortion-doctor-interview-post-roe/

‘People want me dead’: abortion providers fear violence after Roe overturned

Danger is a daily reality for the health workers, and moments of upheaval raise the risk, expert says
Chris Stein
Sun 3 Jul 2022

Boulder, Colorado, has for decades made its abortion providers feel welcome. The city council passed one of the country’s first laws regulating how close demonstrators could get to patients seeking reproductive care, and residents took to the streets in protest when it became clear that the supreme court was ready to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, as it did last month.

“Boulder is probably the most pro-choice community in the country,” said Warren Hern, director of the Boulder Abortion Clinic. “But there are people in the community who want me dead.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/03/abortion-providers-violence-danger-roe-wade

03.07.2022