The Los Angeles Times recently published an interview with Warren Hern, the Colorado late-term abortionist who, at 83, says he has no plans to stop his grisly work anytime soon. The interview gives numerous faulty justifications for killing preborn children and largely recycles old lies and fear tactics to sway people to support abortion.
Deaths from abortion
According to Hern, he regularly saw women maimed and killed from illegal abortions as a med student in the 1960s. This, the Times reported, is what led him to see abortion as his “calling.” But with the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned, Hern predicts: “I think we’ll see a lot of unsafe abortions and women dying.”
Abortion advocates have long claimed that abortion must be legal and unlimited or thousands of women will die every year. They point to the time before Roe v. Wade as proof. But the lie that thousands of women died prior to Roe v. Wade has been repeatedly debunked, including by the Washington Post.
If history is any indication — and it is — overturning Roe v. Wade will not lead to a massive spike in abortion-related deaths.
Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Steichen Calderone had previously noted that abortion-related deaths had already been declining steadily before Roe, mostly due to the advent of antibiotics, and due to the fact that the majority of illegal abortions were being committed by trained physicians. In 1972, the year before abortion was legalized, the number of deaths in the United States from legal abortions was 24, with just 39 deaths as a result of illegal abortions. Women are still dying from legal abortion in America today.
Considering the fact that Hern once called human beings a “planetary cancer,” it’s hard to believe he has a problem with women (or anyone, for that matter) dying. But regardless, in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned and states are able to make their own laws about abortion, women will not be dying by the thousands.
Abortion as love
Hern has said that the first abortion he committed was on a 17-year-old girl. “I was terrified, and so was she,” Hern wrote in a medical journal. “She cried after the operation for sadness and relief. Her tears and the immensity of the moment brought my tears. I felt I had found a new definition of the idea of medicine as an act of compassion and love for one’s fellow human beings, an idea that I gained from learning about Albert Schweitzer.”
Today, Hern says he shows compassion by killing babies because they have disabilities — and then gives their mothers doll clothes so they can dress up their aborted children and take selfies with them.
READ: Despite what Planned Parenthood believes, abortion is not humanitarian aid
But Hern also claims that he commits late-term abortions without ever causing any injuries or deaths, thanks to his “pioneering” new procedures, and the Times unquestioningly printed this.
Yet, despite his boasting, Hern is no stranger to maiming women. He was sued for leaving the skull of a 25-week preborn child in the mother’s uterus, which is after the point of accepted viability. Though the anesthesia did not work, and Hern could see the woman had not fully dilated, he went ahead with the abortion. Eventually, the woman found out from her regular OB/GYN that the skull had been left behind; the damage was so great that she had to undergo a hysterectomy, leaving her sterile.
This is definitively an injury that resulted from an abortion Hern committed.
There is no way to know how many women Hern has injured or how many women have been injured by abortion throughout the United States, because only about half of all states even require abortion complications to be reported.
Furthermore, despite his talk of “compassion” and “love,” Hern’s patients seemingly have felt otherwise. One former patient described him as “very condescending and suspicious,” said that Hern was rude, paranoid, and scolded her for wearing lipstick. Another patient said Hern “speaks aggressively and it made me feel uncomfortable and slightly scared.”
The reasons for late-term abortions
The Times also repeated another long-debunked pro-abortion claim: that late-term abortions are most often committed due to health problems with the mother or baby. “Many of the abortions Hern has performed involved fetuses with severe abnormalities. His patients have also included victims of incest and rape, drug addicts, an autistic teenager, a 10-year-old girl and a mother of three living in her car,” the article reads, adding, “Many of the pregnancies were planned, but doctors did not detect abnormalities until the third trimester.”
Abortion is a deliberate act of killing, and is never truly necessary because of a fetal diagnosis; it is an act of eugenics to kill a human being for lacking certain characteristics or failing to meet certain standards.
In addition, most women who have late-term abortions, or any abortions, do so not because of fetal abnormalities or other health issues. A 1988 Guttmacher study found that just two percent (2%) of women who had abortions 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.” Pro-abortion researcher Diana Greene Foster stated, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service, that abortions for fetal abnormalities “make up a small minority of later abortion.” And 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).”
The problem is, few people support abortion at, say, 30 weeks — so the Times helped Hern to put a positive spin on the killing to make it more palatable for the general public.
Abortion staffers and filthy facilities
Not everything came up roses for Hern in the article, however. He admitted that he is often shunned when people find out he is an abortionist, but the Times likely thought saying so would help garner compassion for Hern. “You’d get to know someone, and as soon as they found out I did abortions they didn’t want anything to do with you,” Hern said. “I felt like damaged goods.”
And though one of his staffers speaks positively about their violent work, the Times and Hern admit that it often has a negative effect. The Times wrote:
The work has caused some of his employees “serious emotional reactions that produced physiological symptoms, sleep disturbances, effects on interpersonal relationships and moral anguish,” Hern reported in a medical journal.
Some said they dreamed that they vomited fetuses.
Hern’s staffers are also far from alone in suffering after participating in abortion. Physicians, medical students, and other medical staffers have frequently reported having serious negative reactions after witnessing, or participating in, an abortion. Many speak of being traumatized or having nightmares, even decades later.
Meanwhile, the Times obliviously lamented the poor condition of Hern’s abortion facility before highlighting his lavish home.
“Security costs and debts have become so ‘crippling,’ Hern said, that he delayed building a new facility. For now, he’s stuck with the 70-year-old building’s plumbing problems, finicky water heater and uneven clay foundation,” the Times wrote. “Back home on a recent evening, Hern considered the stunning mountain vista framed by the front window of his living room. His wildlife photography covered the walls surrounding his gleaming grand piano.”
Abortion industry workers make a lot of money — yet, in the United States, abortion facilities are largely unregulated. And even as the facilities become more decrepit, abortionists like Hern rake in large amounts of money and treat themselves. (Even the Times noted that Hern charges as much as $25,000 for a single abortion.)
The Los Angeles Times wants to portray Hern as a compassionate hero, giving women excellent medical care and saving lives. But this sadly could not be further from the truth. It’s not surprising that Hern and those in the pro-abortion media need to rely on lies and fear tactics; otherwise, they would get little support for their violent agenda.
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