The Legacy of Dr. Warren Hern: Abortion Provider, Women’s Health Advocate and Target of Hate

“There may be no work in medicine that demands more of a person in many ways than specializing in abortion services,” said Dr. Warren Hern, pictured here answering the phone at his clinic on Jan. 31, 2022. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

After more than 50 years of providing abortions, Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colo., will retire on Jan. 22, 2025—the 50th anniversary of opening his private medical practice, Boulder Abortion Clinic, P.C. For years, he has been one of the most high-profile abortion doctors in the United States—one of only a handful of providers to perform abortions in the late second trimester and third trimester of pregnancy.

Though only about 1.5 percent of abortions in the U.S. take place after 20 weeks’ gestation, often due to lethal or serious fetal anomalies or health emergencies of pregnant women, those who perform such abortions have been subject to an even higher level of violence and harassment than that of other providers. 

In a letter to Ms. executive editor Kathy Spillar reflecting on his five-plus decades in medicine, Hern described his role and his clinic as “providing the safest, most compassionate and highest quality outpatient abortion services available anywhere.”

Though Hern will not be involved in the day-to-day operations of the clinic after this month, the Boulder clinic will continue to offer “surgical and medical abortions from 6 through 32+ weeks’ gestation …. [specializing] in caring for women with advanced pregnancies afflicted with serious medical complications and fetal abnormalities,” according to Hern.

One of the most traumatic events of Hern’s life was the loss of his close friend and colleague, Dr. George Tiller, also a provider of later abortions, who was assassinated in his church by an antiabortion zealot after being assailed for years as “Tiller the Killer,” including by a Fox News personality.  

But even before Hern started performing third-trimester abortions, he faced violent threats. In the earliest days of his abortion practice, as he recounts in a recent memoir, he received so many death threats that he slept with a rifle by his bed. His office was shot up at one point (though no one was injured), leading him to install bulletproof glass. At times, including his travel to be a pallbearer at Tiller’s funeral, he was assigned federal marshals to accompany him. On trips to professional conferences, he often paid for a security detail. 

Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe v. Wade by Warren M. Hern, published by Routledge on Sept. 30, 2024.

Though in the early years following Roe, most abortion providers understandably chose to remain below the radar and focus on their medical work, Hern has written prolifically about abortion from the very start, not only in medical journals and in several books, but also for the lay public in periodicals such as The New York Times and Ms., and numerous other places. He was among the first in abortion circles to raise awareness of the emerging threat of the religious right in the 1980s and its connection to antiabortion terrorism. Decrying the fanaticism that has led to the killings of Tiller and other members of the abortion providing community, he has said on several occasions that “the only difference between the American antiabortion movement and the Taliban is about 8,000 miles.”

Much of Hern’s writing for the public has been an effort to counter the stigma facing abortion and to humanize abortion providers, who are often met with a lack of sympathy and understanding, even by those who support abortion. For example, in a letter to the New York Times, he criticized the paper’s use of the term “abortionist,” arguing that it was beyond reclamation: “It is a highly charged word that is pejorative, derogatory and defamatory. It is most often used by antiabortion fanatics with words like ‘murderer,’ ‘baby-killer’ and other slanderous phrases.”  

Dr. Warren Hern at his Boulder clinic on April 2, 1989. (Jerry Cleveland / The Denver Post via Getty Images)

In his memoir, Hern describes the unique role of those who perform abortions: “There may be no work in medicine that demands more of a person in many ways than specializing in abortion services. It not only requires excellent surgical skills, experience, and judgement, but it also requires a broad understanding of how society works.” He continues, “It requires an understanding of how pregnancy, childbirth and abortion affect women and how these experiences occur in a biocultural context.” 

It is not surprising that Hern in the above statement emphasizes the importance of attending to the biocultural aspects of reproductive issues. For over 60 years—prior to commencing his domestic abortion practice—he has made repeated visits to the Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon, both offering healthcare and studying them from an anthropological perspective. It is this long involvement in the Peruvian work, love of the Colorado outdoors, strong family and friendship ties and, above all, the appreciation of patients, that Hern credits with having enabled him to withstand the stresses of being targeted by the antiabortion movement. 

As Warren Hern moves into the next phase of his life, he will carry the memories of the thousands of women and other pregnancy-capable individuals he has treated over the course his long abortion practice. A note he received from one patient no doubt reflects the feelings of many: “I can’t put into words my gratitude for your compassion during the hardest time in my life.”

About

Carole Joffe is a professor at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) and a professor of sociology emerita at the University of California, Davis. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe But Not Abortion.