(Oregon Right to Life) — The late-term abortion facility in Boulder, Colorado, run by notorious abortion provider Warren Hern has officially closed its doors after five decades in operation.
“After more than 50 years… we have closed and have stopped scheduling patients,” a notice written by Dr. Hern and posted to the Boulder Abortion Clinic facility’s website states.
Hern, 86, founded the Boulder Abortion Clinic in 1975. He is known for performing abortions well into the third trimester, as well as for his controversial statements describing humanity as a “malignant ecotumor.”
“Although I love my work, I have wanted for years to be free from the operating room and the daily cares of a private medical practice,” Hern wrote in his statement about the facility’s closure, adding that while he must “leave this sacred commitment to others,” he is still “committed to reproductive freedom [sic] for women” and “will find other ways to support that.”
The Boulder Abortion Clinic opened its doors in January 1975, just two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade effectively forced all states to permit legal abortion.
Hern’s abortion facility has since become known as one of the few in the nation that openly advertises abortions throughout the third trimester, which are fully legal under Colorado law.
The website states that late-term abortions are performed in serious cases.
“[P]atients coming in for third trimester abortion (later abortions) are often seeking services for termination of a desired pregnancy that has developed serious complications,” the website states. Hern has said that he would not perform a late-term abortion for someone who simply demanded one.
“I am not an abortion-dispensing machine. I’m a physician, and there are things I will do and things I will not,” he told The New Yorker last year.
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However, in the same interview, Hern stated that pregnancy is inherently dangerous, suggesting that abortion “at any point” can be acceptable if a woman no longer wants “to continue the pregnancy.”
“[I]f you’re pregnant, you’re at risk of dying from that pregnancy,” he said. “Doesn’t matter whether you’re happy about being pregnant.”
“If having the abortion at any point in pregnancy is between fifteen and twenty times safer than carrying the pregnancy to term, what is the possible justification for forcing a woman to continue the pregnancy if she doesn’t want to?” he said in his interview with The New Yorker.
Studies suggesting that abortion is safer than childbirth have drawn strong scrutiny from pro-life researchers.
A 2012 journal article penned by Elizabeth Raymond, Gynuity Health Products reproductive health scientist; and David Grimes, University of North Carolina School of Medicine Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology clinical professor and abortion provider; claimed that “[t]he risk of death associated with childbirth is approximately 14 times higher than with abortion.”
However, in a systematic review of the data the following year, researcher Byron Calhoun, Professor and Vice-Chair in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at West Virginia University-Charleston, wrote that “[t]his statement is unsupported by the literature and there is no credible scientific basis to support it.”
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Meanwhile, Hern’s published opinions regarding the value of human life have also raised concerns.
Live Action pointed to a 1993 paper in which he wrote that “[t]he human species is an example of a malignant ecotumor, an uncontrolled proliferation of a single species that threatens the existence of other species in their habitats.”
And Hern didn’t change his mind in later decades.
In a 2022 book, he suggested “the new scientific name of the human species be Homo ecophagus … ‘the man who devours the ecosystem.’”
“Homo ecophagus is a rapacious, ubiquitous, predatory, omni-ecophagic species that is a malignant epiecopathologic process engaged in the conversion of all plant, animal, organic and inorganic planetary material into human biomass or its adaptive adjuncts and support systems,” he wrote.
Though Hern’s facility is permanently closing its doors, unborn lives remain at serious risk in Colorado.
Like Oregon, Colorado currently permits abortion up to the moment of birth for any reason. Just last year, voters in the state approved a ballot measure to enshrine a “right” to abortion in the state constitution.
Oregon Right to Life believes in the sanctity of all human life from the moment of conception to natural death. Abortion ends the life of a genetically distinct, growing human being. We oppose abortion at any point of gestation. In rare cases, a mother may have a life threatening condition in which medical procedures intended to treat the condition of the mother may result in the unintended death of her preborn baby. At the same time, ORTL recognizes that modern medical practice has and will continue to increase the ability to save both the life of the mother and the baby. Read this and all our position statements here.
