The Boulder Abortion Clinic, one of the relatively few options in the country for third-trimester pregnancy terminations and the longtime target of anti-abortion demonstrators and violent threats, has closed after 50 years.
Dr. Warren Hern, the clinic’s outspoken director, has been hailed as a fierce champion of reproductive rights, and, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned, patients traveled from around the country and overseas for later-term procedures.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains said Hern’s retirement and the closure of the Boulder Abortion Clinic will have a “profound impact” in Colorado.
In an interview Wednesday, Hern said he had run the practice for 50 years as of January, and saw his final patient last week. The clinic’s website has been replaced by a message saying that it would no longer accept patients, though a staff member still answered the phone as of mid-week.
“I’ve done my best to do this well,” Hern said about his decision to retire. “It’s time.”
Most states have a limit on how far into pregnancy doctors can perform an abortion. Colorado is one of nine states without a limit, according to the Guttmacher Institute. A ballot initiative to add a 22-week limit in Colorado failed in 2020, with 59% of voters rejecting it.
Third-trimester abortions account for a small percentage of all terminations. Of the 14,691 abortions in Colorado in 2023, the most recent year with data, 73% happened at eight weeks or earlier. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported 137 abortions, or just under 1% of the total, at 28 weeks or later.
Patients will continue to have access to later-term abortion in Colorado, said Laura Chapin, spokeswoman for abortion rights nonprofit Cobalt.
“Boulder Abortion Clinic and its staff served many patients with critical health care needs over the years, and we appreciate their work,” she said in a statement. “Warren Hern was a trailblazer in the abortion rights movement, and his legacy carries over to ensuring we can protect abortion access today and going forward.”
Most early abortions involve pills to block hormones that support a developing pregnancy and to force the uterus to expel the embryo. Later abortions can involve suction or scooping out tissue from the uterus.
Hern said his procedure, if he determined it was safer for the woman to end the pregnancy than to continue carrying it, was to stop the fetus’s heart with an injection. The woman would then deliver the fetus, as if she’d had a stillbirth.
Some patients traveled to see Hern from as far as the East Coast, Australia and Europe after discovering severe birth defects late in their pregnancies. Women at average risk generally receive an ultrasound to check for anomalies 20 weeks into a roughly 40-week pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains said in a statement that it was working with partners to find options in the wake of the Boulder Abortion Clinic’s closure. In some cases, Hern saw patients with more-complex conditions than even other providers who performed later abortions.
“As we face the profound impact of the clinic’s closure, we are actively working with our local and national partners to fill this gap and support patients’ ability to access this essential, specialized health care,” the statement said. “It is necessary, it’s life-affirming, and it must remain available.”
As one of the relatively few places that perform third-trimester abortions, the clinic became a regular target for mostly peaceful, but sometimes violent, opposition to abortion. It had bullet-resistant windows since 1988, after a gunman fired five shots into the clinic. Hern said he and multiple staff members narrowly escaped death.
Anti-abortion groups celebrated news of Hern’s retirement on social media.
“This is a step forward in protecting unborn babies and their mothers from the violence of abortion,” the organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America wrote, calling it a “victory.”
The Boulder Abortion Clinic saw about 45,000 patients over 50 years, mostly women who lacked other options, many of whom couldn’t afford the relatively expensive procedure, Hern said.
While Boulder is generally supportive of abortion rights, the national political climate, the financial realities of running a practice and the frequent death threats providers receive make it unlikely that someone else will start a similar clinic, he said.
“No reasonable person would do what I’ve done, and most people are reasonable,” he said. “But I’m proud of what I’ve done.”
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