“It became impossible to continue, but closing is one of the most painful decisions of my life,” 87-year-old clinic founder and late-term abortionist Dr. Warren Hern said of closing the Boulder Abortion Clinic last month.
The clinic was one of the few in the U.S. that aborted unborn babies after 28 weeks of pregnancy, and for years, Hern was the only abortionist in the U.S. who performed abortions later in pregnancy, according to the report.
The clinic ultimately closed because of financial issues: Hern said many women had difficulty paying for $10,000 late-term abortions, which are often not covered by insurance, and said the number of longtime personal donors was also decreasing, the report states. He said he hoped someone would take over his practice, but no one ever did.
“I had to make a decision really, you know, sort of on the basis of the situation at the moment that we couldn’t continue,” he said. “It was very, very painful. I see this as my personal failure.”
Hern has been quoted in various left-wing media outlets discussing his performance of late-term abortions. In an extensive interview with The Atlantic published in May of 2023, he admitted to going up to 32 weeks and beyond.
One woman the reporter spoke with recalled getting an abortion from Hern at 35 weeks after her baby was diagnosed with brain anomalies that would have led to her child living with disabilities. The woman described the late abortion as “euthanasia” and said, “I put my baby down.”
Hern said in The Atlantic interview that many babies suffering late-term abortions are unwanted for other reasons besides fetal anomalies.
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“Abortions that come after devastating medical diagnoses can be easier for some people to understand. But Hern estimates that at least half, and sometimes more, of the women who come to the clinic do not have these diagnoses. He and his staff are just as sympathetic to other circumstances,” the article reads.
The article continues:
The reason doesn’t really matter to Hern. Medical viability for a fetus—or its ability to survive outside the uterus—is generally considered to be somewhere from 24 to 28 weeks. Hern, though, believes that the viability of a fetus is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it. He applies the same principle to all of his prospective patients: If he thinks it’s safer for them to have an abortion than to carry and deliver the baby, he’ll take the case—usually up until around 32 weeks, with some rare later exceptions, because of the increased risk of hemorrhage and other life-threatening conditions beyond that point.
Hern further admitted to doing abortions for sex selection twice, “once for this woman, and once for someone who’d desperately wanted a girl” and said, “It was their choice to make.”
He also aborted babies at 15 or 16 weeks in the 1970s who still had beating hearts when they were removed from the mothers before dying outside the womb, according to the report.
Thousands of unborn babies are killed in abortions after 21 weeks of pregnancy every year. The media frames the loss of thousands of unborn lives as rare because late-term abortions make up a small percentage of abortions overall.
For example, there were 625,978 legal induced abortions recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2021. One percent of those were after 21 weeks, which is more than 6,000 post-viability babies killed in abortions. The pro-abortion Guttmacher institute estimated that more than one million abortions were performed in 2024, which by CDC estimates could mean at least 10,000 late-term abortions were performed that year.
There is disagreement on what the term “late-term abortion” actually means. Pro-abortion organizations often reject the term and say the official medical definition of “late-term” would mean 41 weeks, or past full-term. The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute has called the definition of late-term abortion “imprecise and shifting,” but has generally defined it as abortion later in pregnancy, typically when babies can survive outside of the womb, “with instances of survival occurring at 22 weeks gestation or slightly earlier.”
The Atlantic article describes Hern’s late-term abortion method in brutal detail, noting that “sometimes, the fetus will be whole, intact,” and other times he “must remove it in parts.”
Nine states and Washington, DC, have no limits on abortion, according to Abortion Finder. Those states are Alaska, Vermont, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, and New Jersey. Under Roe v. Wade, a now-defunct 1973 Supreme Court decision which had invented a constitutional right to abortion, most states allowed abortions up to viability, which is often considered to be between 20 and 24 weeks. Some states allowed abortions after that point, sometimes under certain health exceptions.
According to the AP report, which cites the Later Abortion Initiative by Ibis Reproductive health, fewer than 20 clinics perform abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy in the U.S. The number is not comprehensive because it does not include hospitals and a handful of other clinics.
“Currently, the group lists three clinics — in New Mexico, Maryland and Washington, D.C. — that provide services after 28 weeks,” according to the report. “Five others — in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Washington state — will consider patients depending on physician recommendations or fetal and maternal conditions.”
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton.
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