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.
Dr. Warren Hern“Many of those doing this work with me have been with me for decades,” he wrote. “They have shown the utmost courage and commitment to the women who have been our patients in the face of great personal danger from the constant threat of lethal anti-abortion violence that we have experienced. They have shown great personal strength in supporting women and their families in the worst moments of their lives.”
The private clinic opened in 1975. Hern, 86, has spoken in support of abortion rights during his 55-year career and called it his “life’s work.” He said it was time to retire and “leave this sacred commitment to others.”
“I have wanted for years to be free from the operating room and the daily cares of a private medical practice,” Hern wrote. “When I have a patient, I can’t do anything else. Her safety and well-being is my priority. Nothing else matters while her life is at stake.
“I remain committed to reproductive freedom for women, and I will find other ways to support that.”
Anti-abortion groups and some conservative political news outlets were celebrating the news, including with headlines such as, “Late term abortionist shutters Boulder clinic after 50 years taking lives of the unborn.”
Hern began his career as founding medical director of the Boulder Valley Clinic, the first private, nonprofit abortion clinic in the state. After performing more than 1,300 first-trimester surgical procedures during his first year without a complication, he reported on his clinical work at the 1974 Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association in New Orleans and in a 1975 paper published in the Rocky Mountain Medical Journal.
He is well known nationally for speaking out about the need for abortions in later pregnancy. One of Hern’s close friends, fellow abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, was murdered in 2009 in Kansas by an anti-abortion extremist.
About 20 states have banned or limited abortion since the 2022 historic Supreme Court ruling that reversed Roe v. Wade, which had established a constitutional right to abortion in 1973. Colorado has no restrictions on when during a pregnancy a woman can get an abortion.
The rate of abortions among Colorado women has been declining, while the number of people traveling here from other states has been on the rise.
Of the 14,691 abortions in Colorado in 2023, 4,244 were for people from out of state, according to the state health department. That percentage — roughly 29% of abortions were for out-of-state residents — is the highest Colorado has seen since at least 2004, which is the farthest back data provided by CDPHE goes. People from Texas, where abortions are prohibited after detection of a fetal heartbeat, made up the overwhelming majority of out-of-state residents receiving abortions in Colorado.
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