Warren Hern tells me he performed his first abortion in 1971, two years before the monumental Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade legalized abortion across the United States. Fifty-one years later, he’s still aborting babies in a Colorado abortion clinic — and facing the potential that Roe will be overturned.
Hern is one of the longest-performing abortionists who is still alive in the United States. When I asked him about this during a phone interview earlier this week, he was momentarily confused.
“In terms of the duration of the pregnancy or the number of years I’ve been doing it?” he asked, noting that he could claim “both” these titles.
Hern advertises that he will abort babies that are in the first, second, and third trimester (unborn babies that are 28 weeks and older). On his website, he notes that his office specializes in fetal abnormalities and that his patients “are often seeking services for termination of a desired pregnancy that has developed serious complications.”
“We perform either a four-day procedure similar to our second-trimester approach, or in rare cases offer an induced fetal demise,” his website said.
In that second-trimester approach for a baby that is older than 26 weeks, Hern’s office first performs an ultrasound, blood tests, and counseling before inducing fetal demise (injecting the baby’s heart with poison through the mother’s abdomen while she is under anesthesia).
On the second day, the abortion doctor confirms that the baby is dead, and inserts a single stick of laminaria into the cervix. On the third day, he removes the laminaria, and then inserts multiple laminaria while the mother is under anesthesia.
The fourth day is when the “procedure,” happens, according to Hern’s website — the baby is removed from the mother’s womb.
“On the second trimester abortion procedure day, we start with placing an IV and often provide some medication for anxiety if patients request it,” his website says. “The laminaria and gauze are removed, and the amniotic membrane is ruptured (‘breaking the water’). The amniotic fluid is drained as completely as possible.”
“When the cervix is dilated enough, the uterine contents are evacuated surgically by using forceps and other instruments,” the abortion doctor’s website says, referring to a dilation and evacuation abortion. “Patients are observed for up to two hours to ensure that their bleeding is light and that they are recovering well.”
The abortionist insisted to me that he does not “deliver live fetuses.” He didn’t like my line of questioning on this point, and refused to weigh in on the five premie-sized aborted babies intercepted by pro-life activists here in Washington, D.C. from Dr. Cesare Santangelo’s abortion clinic.
“This is anti-abortion pornography,” he said. “This is a violation of the women’s privacy. And these are individual situations, individual tragedies, and that’s none of their business.”
“Even if the doctor was performing technically illegal abortions?” I asked. He told me he didn’t know anything about the case.
On Monday evening, Politico revealed a draft opinion showing that the Supreme Court justices could likely rule to overturn Roe v. Wade. The news has sparked nationwide protests and frenzy as abortion activists and supporters grapple with the potential that Roe v. Wade could soon be overturned.
Hern absolutely believes it will be.
“Roe will be overturned,” Hern predicted to me without hesitation. “That’s what the last ten presidential elections have been about.”
The abortionist credited former President Donald Trump and the American people with this pro-life victory (Hern is not a Trump fan — he described the former president as a “fascist demagogue who is one of the most ignorant persons on the planet”).
“The fate of Roe v. Wade was sealed in 2016 when Donald Trump won,” the abortionist told me. “And I think that the American people voted for that.”
“I think that the Roe v. Wade decision is an important symbol of the right to choose for women,” he said. “And it certainly allowed more than 60 million women to have abortions at that time. But it has certain qualifications that are really very problematical.”
“There should be no restriction whatsoever on access to safe abortion services,” Hern insisted. “Roe set that up. And Sandra Day O’Connor took advantage of that to place new obstacles for women in getting abortions later in pregnancy.”
The Republican Party has been “extremely successful” in using the abortion industry to gain power, he claimed, noting that Trump received over 80% of the white Christian Evangelical vote in the 2016 election.
“The trade-off was that he would install anti-abortion judges on the Supreme Court,” the abortionist said, adding, “And he did. That’s why we have now the overwhelming anti-abortion majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. That was the result of the 2016 election.”
But Republican pro-life momentum began with “the election of Ronald Reagan,” he said. According to the abortionist, that momentum carried on with “the reelection of Ronald Reagan, the election of George H.W. Bush, the election of George W. Bush, the reelection of George W. Bush, and the election of Trump.”
I asked him if he viewed the likely overturn of Roe as a “longstanding Republican victory.” He pointed to the late Bob Dole’s victory over abortionist Bill Roy in 1974.
“In 1974, Bob Dole was running for re-election for the first time, in the United States Senate in Kansas,” he said. “His opponent was Dr. Bill Roy … who had delivered thousands of babies and then a handful of abortions for medical reasons. And a month before the election, Dole was losing. He started calling Dr. Roy an abortionist and said he was in favor of abortion on demand, and Dole won by one point instead of losing by 10 points.”
“So the abortion issue worked for him and the Republican Party took it from there,” he added.
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, coined the term “safe, legal, and rare,” in the 90s in reference to abortion, suggesting that though abortions should be legal, they shouldn’t be common occurrences.
The Democratic Party’s more recent departure from the phrase and embrasure of abortion on demand has sparked criticism from less radical Democrats like Tulsi Gabbard and former Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen.
I don’t agree with @TulsiGabbard on a lot, but do appreciate that she brought up the third rail for Democrats: that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” We should reduce the need for abortions by investing in prevention.
— Leana Wen, M.D. (@DrLeanaWen) October 16, 2019
But Hern called the phrase “safe, legal, and rare,” a very “misleading slogan.”
“Abortions will never be rare,” the abortionist told me. “Women have been having abortions for hundreds of thousands of years.”
He told me that it “depends on the circumstances” when I asked him how far along he would do an abortion, claiming that most patients he sees in the “very late stage of pregnancy” want to abort their unborn baby because of a “catastrophic, fatal abnormality” where the baby has “no hope of having any kind of life or normal life.”
“In that case, the pregnancy is an immediate threat to the woman’s life and ending the pregnancy for the abortion is much safer for the woman than carrying the pregnancy to term.”
“Even if the woman could go into labor any minute?” I asked.
“That’s a very questionable statement,” he told me. “Women have miscarriages when they are 10 or 20 weeks pregnant. That is not a useful characterization. My point is that abortion is a fundamental component of women’s health care. And the decision about whether that should happen is up to the woman, and how it should happen and whether it should happen under what circumstances is between her and her physician.”
“So it sounds like you think that no one should be questioning how this goes, and it should be between the doctor and the woman,” I said.
“People are free to question anything,” he said, beginning to sound upset, “I’m not sure I’m getting through my point to you.”
The rhetoric surrounding abortion is “very, very destructive,” he told me. “The whole purpose of the rhetoric is to get political power and not to help understand [abortion].”
When I pressed him to say whether he had ever seen a baby born alive in an abortion, as pro-life activists claim happens in Santangelo’s Washington Surgi-Clinic, he became flustered and told me I was getting into “propaganda” and “rhetoric.”
“We are getting off into this speculation here,” he said. “I’m not really — I think that I told you what I think. I think that we don’t need to continue any further. You’re asking very provocative questions and you’re free to ask them, but I really think that I’ve told you what I think, that abortion is a fundamental component of women’s health care. There should be no restrictions at all on abortion whatsoever.”
“It’s a matter for the woman and the physician to decide,” he finished. “It’s a medical matter, and the rhetoric is not helpful.”
“An anti-abortion fanatic will say anything to get a headline out to help win elections for Republicans,” the abortionist insisted.
When I pressed him, he told me that for late-term abortions, he injects the baby with a substance that stops the baby’s heart before inducing the abortion. That’s called an “induced fetal demise,” he said.
“And it’s never … not stopped?” I asked. “I had been told that sometimes it doesn’t stop the heart.”
“We don’t deliver live fetuses,” he finally said. “That is not dead. If that happens somewhere, that is not something I know about, and I have no comment about it. There are ways to keep that from happening. Doing the induced fetal demise is part of making the abortion as safe as possible for the woman.”