One of the few abortionists in the country willing to commit late-term abortions, Warren Hern has been featured often in the media, especially in recent months. Yet instead of being portrayed as a man who brutally and violently ends the lives of preborn children (and who has a sneering disdain for humanity), he is portrayed as a compassionate hippie liberal — a pioneering doctor and a lover of nature. The latest piece promoting Hern, however, takes an interesting turn; in it, he makes claims about late-term abortions — claims which contradict his own previous statements.
In the New Yorker, Hern spoke to Jia Tolentino about the gruesome work he does. Tolentino asked:
I want to talk about what late abortion is and is not. The anti-abortion movement has created a false image: as if late abortions involve the death of a nearly full-term baby, the size and age and shape of a newborn. Even the phrase ‘late-term abortion’ implies this. For the sake of clarity, do abortions ever take place close to or at full term?
Notice the setup here. Tolentino claimed pro-lifers “created a false image,” being that “late abortions involve” a baby “the size and age and shape of a newborn.”
In reality, while this may be at times what is presented in political rhetoric, pro-life groups have always reported on the fact that late or late-term abortions may sometimes refer to abortions past the first trimester (14 weeks or later), but more commonly refer to 21 weeks or later, in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.
Babies have survived when born prematurely at 21 weeks gestation. Though they are not the size or age of full-term newborns, they are most definitely distinctly human beings. Here is what babies born at 21 weeks look like:
Screenshot: Richard Hutchinson at 21 weeks
Baby Madalyn, born at 21 weeks, who died two hours after birth
Hern answered “no” when asked, “Do abortions ever take place close to or at full term?” And in the next breath, he talked about how he aborted a child at “over 35 weeks” by lethal injection:
There are situations where, in a desired pregnancy, a catastrophic event occurs in the middle of the third trimester. For example, a woman came to me and she was over thirty-five weeks. Her doctor sent her to me because the fetus had a stroke that destroyed the brain. The fetus was not going to be able to survive, and if it did it would not have a life.
She was terribly grieved about this. She came to me. I did the injection [that stops the heart of the fetus in utero]. Her fetus was delivered in her hospital with her doctor and her husband present. Do you want to call that an abortion? I don’t call that an abortion. It was an interruption of a pregnancy that was hopelessly complicated. There was no point in forcing her to carry for another month, and then have a dead baby. That is cruel. It may have been necessary two hundred years ago, but it is not necessary now.
So Hern intentionally killed the child in utero, and the child died, and then labor was induced later at a hospital. Though Hern may not personally wish to call this an “abortion,” this procedure is actually known as an induction abortion. The reason it is an abortion is that the goal was to intentionally, unnaturally, end the life of a child (by lethal injection, no less). You can see the process in the video below:
And in fact, the New Yorker interviewer pointed out to Hern that what he’s described is an abortion, saying, “What you’re describing, though, is abortion care. To me, that story illuminates something people are learning at great cost now: that abortion is often procedurally indistinguishable from miscarriage management, stillbirth management.”
It’s “procedurally indistinguishable,” only if you think that lethally injecting a child or intentionally dismembering a child while he or she is still alive, or suctioning him apart while he’s still alive are insignificant actions that no reasonable person could see as being any different than treating someone for a miscarriage (when a child dies accidentally in the womb).
Additionally, Hern claimed, “… our special interest is in helping women who are having abortions later in pregnancy because they have the most difficult circumstances.”
Yet this is clearly the opposite of what Hern stated himself about late-term abortions in a textbook he authored, called “Abortion Practice”:
At times, medical considerations enter into the picture, but decisions are usually made on the basis of such factors as desire or lack of desire for parenthood, stability of relationships, educational status, emotional status, or economic status, among others.
The difference here is that his textbook was meant to be seen by abortionists, not the general public. And the truth is what Hern said in “Abortion Practice,” not what he told the New Yorker. And research, as discussed later in this article, backs up the claims made in Hern’s textbook.
But the New Yorker interview is packed full of lies, including this one:
In terms of popular speculation about late abortion, there was the partial-birth-abortion meme, which was set up in the nineties when an anti-abortion group took some fragmentary information from a presentation at one of [the National Abortion Federation] meetings and turned it into a weapon.
People believed that this was a way that late abortions were being done.
And there were a few people doing a few of these procedures, but it was never the principal way things were done.
It has been a very damaging bit of psychological warfare.
Here are the facts, to cut through all of this nonsense:
1. The presentation to which Hern is referring took place at a National Abortion Federation meeting in Dallas in 1992, and was presented by abortionist Martin Haskell, who is credited with creating the D&X (“partial-birth”) abortion procedure. You can hear that presentation here, and you can read excerpts of his own description of the procedure here. Part of that description is as follows:
The middle finger lifts and pushes the cervix out of the way. While maintaining this tension, the surgeon then takes a pair of blunt Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand, he carefully advances the tip curve down along the spine and under the middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull, under the tip of the middle finger.
Reassessing the proper placement of the closed scissors tip, and safe elevation of the cervix, the surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull. He spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening.
The surgeon then introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he applies traction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient.
It seems that the real “weapons” are instruments of potential healing that are instead used to horrifically kill a child — who is intentionally pulled from the uterus in breech position to then have his brain suctioned out through an incision in the base of his skull. Readers can easily see from the presentation and excerpts above that Hern is attempting to act as if pro-lifers have misrepresented the utter brutality of such a procedure.
2. According to the former head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP), Ron Fitzsimmons, anywhere from 3,000-5,000 of these D&X abortions were being committed annually in the mid-1990s, mostly on healthy preborn children. Hern attempted to present it as rare at that time.
Late-term abortions into the third trimester do take place, and when they do, they are not typically committed because of medical problems or fetal anomalies. And late-term abortions may be “rare” in that they are a small percentage overall, but percentages don’t always present the true picture of the lives lost.
How many late-term abortions are committed?
Research has found that late-term abortions are much more common than people believe. The CDC’s most recent Abortion Surveillance Report states that one percent (1.0%) of all abortions committed in 2021 were carried out after 21 weeks gestation, when preborn children are increasingly able to survive premature birth. With 625,978 total abortions reported to the CDC, that equals roughly 6,260 late (21 weeks or later) abortions.
However, not every state reports its abortion data to the CDC, so the true number is certainly higher, as the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute shows. Its data reveals a much higher number of abortions; for 2023, it reported 1,037,000 abortions, while the most recent CDC data (2021) was significantly lower.
The percentage of late abortions (21 weeks or later) was approximately the same for both reports (CDC = 1%; Guttmacher = 1.3%). Using Guttmacher’s numbers, this equates to approximately 13,481 abortions 21 weeks or later in that one year – 2023 -alone.
Why do women get late-term abortions?
The media has begun to push hard on the idea that late-term abortions never happen, or if they do, it’s only because of urgent medical issues. The facts show otherwise. This includes admissions from actual abortionists that most late-term abortions are committed on healthy babies.
A 1988 Guttmacher study found that just two percent (2%) of women who had abortions late in pregnancy did so because of a health problem with the baby. More than 20 years later, a 2013 study — also published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute — said, “[D]ata suggest that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”
Another study from the pro-abortion group ANSIRH stated, “The reasons people need third-trimester abortions are not so different from why people need abortions before the third trimester… [T]he circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion have overlaps with the pathways to abortion at other gestations.”
That research also revealed:
There are thus many reasons—financial, logistical, and social—why third-trimester abortion care is exceptional compared to first-trimester abortion care. However, there is reason to believe that the circumstances that lead to someone needing a third-trimester abortion are not exceptional. Several studies have highlighted the importance of the timing of pregnancy discovery, with later discovery associated with later presentation to abortion care.
Other research has identified how laws that complicate people’s ability to access abortion, including parental involvement laws and laws that contribute to the reduction of abortion clinics, are associated with later presentation to abortion care for patients.
Some women in the study reported that they didn’t know they were pregnant until later in pregnancy, and this was why their abortions were sought late in pregnancy.
According to a report from the Congressional Research Service, pro-abortion researcher Diana Greene Foster stated that abortions for fetal abnormalities “make up a small minority of later abortion.” In addition, a 2010 paper from Julia Steinberg of the pro-abortion Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health said, “Research suggests that the overwhelming majority of women having later abortions do so for reasons other than fetal anomaly (Drey et al., 2006; Finer et al., 2005, 2006; Foster et al., 2008).”
Is abortion safer than pregnancy?
In his interview with the New Yorker, Hern repeated the common argument that abortion is safer than pregnancy.
“The basic fact is that if you’re pregnant, you’re at risk of dying from that pregnancy,” he said. “Doesn’t matter whether you’re happy about being pregnant. If having the abortion at any point in pregnancy is between fifteen and twenty times safer than carrying the pregnancy to term, what is the possible justification for forcing a woman to continue the pregnancy if she doesn’t want to?”
This is hardly surprising coming from a man who called human beings a “planetary cancer” and who has compared pregnancy to a disease. “Pregnancy is not a benign condition. It can kill you. The treatment of choice for pregnancy is abortion unless the woman wants to carry the pregnancy to term and have a baby,” he said. “That is a view that is abhorrent to those who believe that the purpose of women, aside from giving men pleasure and doing the housework, is to have as many babies as possible.”
Yet only one study has ever found that childbirth is more dangerous than abortion, and its results have never been replicated.
It was authored by two pro-abortion researchers, so it could hardly be said to be an unbiased effort. Elizabeth Raymond is with Gynuity Health Projects, which works to expand access to the abortion pill regimen and overturn safety standards set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and David Grimes is an abortionist. The study did not include statistics from Maryland, Washington D.C., New Hampshire, New York City, or California — none of which report their abortion data, as there is no federal requirement for abortions or abortion complications to be reported by states.
Dr. John Ferrer of the Equal Rights Institute also said the authors manipulated the data. “For example, compared to abortion mortality rates, the ‘maternal mortality rate’ in the RG study is inflated,” he wrote. “The CDC maternal mortality rate takes all birth-related deaths (the numerator) and divides them by only live births (the denominator), so all stillbirths and miscarriages are only addressed in the top number and not the bottom. The result is an inflated mortality rate from childbirth but not abortion.”
The study’s researchers excluded deaths after an abortion that were unrelated — meaning if a woman contracted MRSA at an abortion facility and died, that would not be included in the study. However, they did not do the same for women who gave birth, skewing the results even further against childbirth.
“The study is careful to avoid false positives for abortion cases, presumably since those would undermine its argument, but not so careful with childbirth cases,” Ferrer said. “This double-standard is all the more troublesome because if the same measure were used for both childbirth and abortion then abortion would appear two to four times deadlier than childbirth. Abortion correlates with higher rates of murder, drug-related death, and suicide, but the RG study excludes those cases from the data while including those cases in the data on childbirth. It’s a flagrant double-standard that, by itself ruins the credibility of the RG study.” (emphasis added)
Would Hern commit late-term abortions for no reason?
Hern told the New Yorker he wouldn’t feel comfortable with committing late-term abortions without a medical reason, saying:
All abortions are elective, and all abortions are therapeutic. But take that hypothetical example: a woman walking in at eight months saying, “I just don’t want to do this.” Well, I have to make a judgment about that. I have to ask, is it safer for me to end a pregnancy in my office or let her go to term? Quite aside from the fact that I don’t want to do an abortion at eight months; I don’t feel comfortable doing it.
I am not an abortion-dispensing machine. I’m a physician, and there are things I will do and things I will not. I will do a late abortion for someone who has a serious fetal abnormality or a twelve-year-old kid who’s been raped, but I would not do it without that indication.
It’s an interesting statement, coming from someone who, just last month, told the Los Angeles Times that he “loves” his job committing late-term abortions.
This interview with the New Yorker isn’t based on truth; after all, Hern has contradicted the statements he himself has made, as well as known factual data. Through this interview, Hern is attempting to soften the reality of what abortion is for people who may not otherwise know.
In short, it’s propaganda.
