Dr. Warren Hern has been performing late-stage abortions for decades.
In 1988, someone tried to shoot him, and his clinic in Boulder, Colorado, is periodically bombed by protesters who accuse him of being a “murderer.”
But Dr. Hern, now 86, says he will continue to perform abortions after 32 weeks (the only doctor to publicly admit to having done so) to protect women’s health.
He says that since Roe V Wade was overturned, he is making more late firings than ever.
Next week’s presidential election is the first since the repeal of Roe, and access to abortion is a top issue among voters, especially women.
In a series of interviews in recent months, Dr. Hern said he was not an “abortion dispensing machine” and that he never performs an abortion after 32 weeks because a woman “simply doesn’t want to have 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 discovered that her fetus had suffered a stroke and its brain had died.
The CDC and states do not provide reliable data on the number of abortions performed after 21 weeks (five months).
Dr. Hern says he offers abortions to women who typically say they really want to have children but have been warned that their fetus has a serious defect.
Colorado is an outlier. Figures show that last year there were 137 abortions at 28 weeks or more. In other states where figures are available, the numbers are lower. The state also has no restrictions on when an abortion can be performed.
in minnesotaFor example, where there are no restrictions on abortion, in 2022 only two late-stage abortions were performed: one between weeks 25 and 30 and another between weeks 31 and 36.
In Michigan, where abortions are restricted beyond 24 weeks, the data shows only two were done after this period in 2023. There was one between 25 and 28 weeks and another after 28 weeks.
The lack of reliable data increases political confusion.
Kamala Harris told Trump at their debate in September about horror stories of pregnant women bleeding to death because doctors feared that if they helped them they would be charged with a crime.
On the other end of the argument, Republican and pro-life activists accused Democrats of supporting firings up to and even after the mandate, and Donald Trump claimed that some doctors execute babies after birth.
Dr. Hern said that since 2022, when Roe was dismissed, he is now seeing about 50 percent more patients than normal.
Abortions at her clinic cost about $6,000 and she says the high price is due to the complexity of the procedure.
Many women get support to cover the costs from nonprofit organizations and state funds when insurance companies do not cover the cost.
It can take three to four days to abort a fetus in the third trimester, she said.
If a patient requests it, the clinic will provide the fetus wrapped in a blanket to hold it or a set of hand or foot prints to take home.
Dr. Hern New York Times on late-term abortions: ‘These are difficult decisions and I’m here to help people, but I’m not an abortion-dispensing machine.
“I’m not going to give it to anyone who walks through the door.”
Abortion has divided the United States, although polls suggest that most voters favor at least some access to abortion.
he told the New Yorkerin an interview in September: “I’m a doctor and there are things I will do and things I won’t do.”
“I will perform a late-term abortion on someone who has a serious fetal abnormality, or on a twelve-year-old girl who has been raped, but I wouldn’t do it without that indication.”
Dr. Hern has been running his clinic for decades.
More than 94 percent of abortions performed in the U.S. occur within the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, CDC statistics show.
And less than one percent are performed after 21 weeks, or beyond the fifth month (about 4,000 of a total of 476,000 abortions in 2021).
Half a dozen patients who had late-stage abortions with Dr. Hern previously spoke to reporters about their decision.
All said they wanted to have a child, but had received a serious diagnosis late in the pregnancy, which had led some to consider abortion a “mercy killing.”
“I left my baby on the floor,” said one woman The Atlantic. ‘It’s euthanasia. That’s the kind of murder this is. But I would do it again a million times if I had to.”
She was 35 weeks pregnant when she was told her daughter had multiple complications.
Doctors said that if the baby was carried to term he would have problems walking, talking, holding his head up and swallowing.
Another woman who terminated her pregnancy at 24 weeks said her baby’s diagnosis meant she would not survive. She said Dr. Hern assured her that “she should not be forced to carry the pregnancy.”
There are a number of rare fetal conditions that may not be detected until at least the second trimester of pregnancy.
These include Dandy-Walker malformation, which is usually not diagnosed until week 20, where the area of the brain responsible for movement and balance does not develop.
It leaves babies with lifelong cognitive, visual and hearing problems, but is rare, affecting only one in 35,000 live births.
Others are agenesis of the corpus callosum, where the structure connecting the two sides of the brain is missing, which is usually detected between 18 and 20 weeks and leaves babies struggling with cognitive decline and difficulties with movement.
And trisomy 13, or Patau syndrome, which may not be detected until week 26 and is a genetic abnormality caused by an extra chromosome 13. It leaves babies with a severe intellectual disability and, in many cases, the pregnancy can be aborted during the third trimester.
There are also cases where a fetus may develop other complications in the third trimester of pregnancy and may no longer be viable.
Dr. Hern revealed a situation in which he was referred to a woman who was 35 weeks pregnant with a fetus who had suffered a stroke that destroyed her brain. This is a perinatal stroke, a complication that occurs in approximately one in every 3,500 live births.
She said she avoids performing abortions beyond 32 weeks, saying there is a risk of bleeding for the mother.
He added: “The basic fact is that if you are pregnant, you are at risk of dying from that pregnancy.”
‘It doesn’t matter if you’re happy to be pregnant. If having an abortion at any point during pregnancy is fifteen to twenty times safer than carrying the pregnancy to term, what is the possible justification for forcing a woman to continue the pregnancy if she does not want to?