New Colorado clinic offers third-trimester abortions for ‘any reason you have’

DENVER — Pro-life groups rejoiced when Dr. Warren Hern retired after 50 years of performing late-term abortions in Boulder, Colorado, but now another all-trimester clinic is stepping in to fill the void.

The RISE Collective began scheduling appointments two weeks ago for late-stage abortions, six months after the Boulder Abortion Clinic closed its doors with Dr. Hern’s retirement.

Dr. Hern, 87, founded the clinic and was the nation’s best-known provider of elective abortions in the final weeks of pregnancy.

RISE, which stands for Reproductive Health, Inclusive Care, Support and Empowerment, becomes one of an estimated five U.S. clinics offering abortions up to 34 weeks of gestation, or about 10 weeks after fetal viability.

“In Boulder, Colorado, a place with a historic legacy of all-trimester abortion care, a new chapter is rising,” the organization said in its video announcement.

Patients don’t need to justify or explain their decision to seek a late-term procedure.

“At RISE Collective, we believe that any reason you have for needing abortion care is yours, and it is the right one,” the video says.

Colorado has no gestational limits on abortion, but RISE said that “while the law is clear, access is not.”

“RISE is one of only a handful of clinics in the country trained to provide abortion care in all trimesters,” the announcement said. “Our medical staff have been doing this work with skill, compassion and dedication for more than two decades.”

Alicia Moreno, the clinic’s executive director, said the facility is staffed by former Boulder Abortion Clinic administrators and clinicians who started up an all-trimester abortion practice after Dr. Hern took down his shingle in April.

“There’s only about 15 doctors in the country that do later [abortion] work, and we have 20% of those doctors in our group,” Ms. Moreno told the Boulder Reporting Lab in May. “We’re trying to keep the band together.”

Pro-life groups were disheartened by the news.

Kelsey Pritchard, a spokesperson for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called it “disappointing but not surprising late-term abortionist Warren Hern’s staff have simply set up shop again, aborting babies as late as 34 weeks.”

She said nine states and the District of Columbia now allow “abortion on demand with no gestational limits.”

Democrats are moving to expand access after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sent abortion decision-making to the states.

“All-trimester abortion facilities have also opened in Maryland and Chicago in the years after Dobbs, as these states with lax laws encourage abortion tourism and even hand out taxpayer-funded grants benefiting late-term abortion business,” Ms. Pritchard told The Washington Times.

In interviews, Dr. Hern often focused on terminating pregnancies in cases of severe fetal abnormalities that weren’t detected until the third trimester.

Still, he acknowledged that at least half of his late-term clients had no such diagnoses.

“The reason doesn’t really matter to Hern,” The Atlantic said in a 2023 article, “The Abortion Absolutist.” “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.”

Tessa Cox, senior research associate at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, said Dr. Hern published research “showing his practice alone performed over 1,000 abortions on unborn babies 18-38 weeks’ gestation between 2000 and 2004.”

One-fifth of those were because of a “diagnosed fetal disorder,” she said.

“Further research also indicated he completed over 700 late-term abortions on healthy unborn babies over nine years,” Ms. Cox said.

Although Colorado has no shortage of abortion clinics, late-term terminations aren’t for the faint of heart.

Dr. Hern pioneered a four-day procedure in which “an injection is done on the first day that stops the fetal heart,” followed by the removal of the “uterine contents” on the fourth day, as described on the Boulder Abortion Clinic website.

Other late-term practices use dilation-and-evacuation methods that typically take two to three days.

Not even Planned Parenthood performs late-term abortions.

The Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains website says it offers surgical abortions up to 25 weeks and six days of gestation.

Ms. Cox said the baby of a woman in a pregnancy crisis “should be delivered in a hospital with available emergency equipment, rather than an abortion facility.”

“Induction or C-section gives the baby a chance — even if slim — to live, while addressing the mother’s health risks,” she said in an email. “This is far more compassionate than a late-term abortion that gives the unborn child no opportunity to survive.”

Abortion rights advocates stress that late-term procedures are rare.

About 93% of abortions are performed before 13 weeks of gestation, and about 1% occur after 21 weeks of gestation, according to 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Babies born at 28 weeks of gestation have a survival rate of 80% to 90%. Those born at 34 weeks have “the same long-term health outcomes as babies who are delivered at full term (40 weeks),” said University of Utah Health.

In a May interview with The Associated Press about his decision to retire, Dr. Hern cited financial issues. He said patients had trouble paying the $10,000 tab and that insurance typically doesn’t cover the costs. He also said donor support had fallen.

He initially planned to keep the clinic open by handing off day-to-day operations to the current staff but ultimately opted to shut down the facility entirely.

“BAC was something that he created, and I don’t know if he could see it exist without him,” Ms. Moreno said. “His identity was so intertwined. He was BAC. BAC was him.”

In 1998, Colorado voters approved a parental notification requirement for minors seeking abortions, which remains the state’s most significant restriction on the procedure.