(OPINION) Dr Warren Hern has been carrying out late stage abortions for decades. In 1988 someone tried to shoot him, and his clinic in Boulder, Colorado, is regularly bombarded by protesters accusing him of being a ‘murderer.’
But Dr Hern, who is now 86 years old, says he will keep carrying out abortions after 32 weeks — the only physician who publicly admits to doing so — to protect women’s health.
He says that since Roe V Wade was overturned, he’s performing more late-term terminations than ever before. It is likely that this is because abortion bans in many states are leading women to seek abortion care elsewhere.
The presidential election next week is the first since the reversal of Roe and access to abortion is a top issue among voters, especially women.
In a series of interviews over recent months, Dr Hern said he was not an ‘abortion dispensing machine’ and never provides a termination after 32 weeks because a woman ‘just doesn’t want a child.’
He said he only performs the procedure if there are complex medical problems, highlighting the case of a woman who was 35 weeks pregnant but found out her fetus had a stroke and its brain had died.
The CDC and states don’t reliably provide data on the number of abortions carried out after 21 weeks (five months).
Colorado is an outlier. Figures show there were 137 abortions at 28 weeks or later last year. In other states where figures are available, the numbers are smaller.
The state also has no restrictions on when an abortion can be carried out.
In Minnesota, for example, where there are no abortion restrictions, just two late-stage abortions were carried out in 2022 — one at 25 to 30 weeks and one at 31 to 36 weeks.
In Michigan, where abortions are restricted beyond 24 weeks, data shows only two were carried out after this period in 2023. There was one between 25 and 28 weeks and one after 28 weeks.
The lack of reliable data adds to confusion politically.
Kamala Harris told Trump at their debate in September that it was ‘not true’ that Roe vs Wade allowed abortions in the seventh, eighth, and ninth months of a pregnancy.
But Dr Hern’s clinic shows these abortions do happen in rare cases.
And since 2022 when Roe was axed, Dr Hern is now handling about 50 percent more patients than normal because women from states that have banned the practice are traveling to Colorado to terminate their pregnancies.
Abortions at his clinic cost around $6,000, and he says the high price tag is because of the complexity of the procedure.
Many women get support to cover the costs from non-profits and state funds when insurance companies won’t front the cost.
It can take three to four days to abort a fetus in the third trimester, he said.
If a patient asks, the clinic will provide them with the fetus wrapped in a blanket to hold or a set of handprints or footprints for them to take home.
Dr Hern the New York Times of late abortions: ‘These are tough calls, and I’m here to help people, but I’m not an abortion dispensing machine. READ MORE
