BOULDER, Colorado (LifeSiteNews) — The gap left in Colorado by the retirement of notorious late-term abortionist Warren Hern has already been filled by the opening of a new facility that advertises third-trimester abortions for “any reason.”
The Washington Times reports that the RISE (“Reproductive Health, Inclusive Care, Support & Empowerment”) Collective has begun scheduling abortion appointments just six months after the retirement of 87-year-old Hern in April, which pro-lifers had celebrated as an end to a half-century of murder.
“In Boulder, Colorado, a place with a historic legacy of all-trimester [so-called] abortion care, a new chapter is rising,” announced the collective, which places no gestational limits on its abortions. “At RISE Collective, we believe that any reason you have for needing abortion […] is yours, and it is the right one … RISE is one of only a handful of clinics in the country trained to provide abortion […] in all trimesters.”
“There’s only about 15 doctors in the country that do later [abortion] work, and we have 20% of those doctors in our group,” executive director Alicia Moreno said. RISE’s staff is partially comprised of former Hern employees.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America spokesperson Kelsey Pritchard called the news “disappointing but not surprising,” noting that Colorado is one of nine states plus the District of Columbia where abortion is legal at any point in pregnancy, making them magnets for “abortion tourism” from pro-life states.
Abortion defenders have largely attempted to downplay late-term abortions as rare bordering on nonexistent, while opposing any attempt to restrict them. But the facts show that they are a very real problem.
According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reviewed by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), while more than 90 percent of abortions occur in the first trimester, more than 50,000 abortions a year take place after 15 weeks (almost four months into pregnancy), and approximately 10,000 after 20 weeks (five months).
Further, CLI documents that various pro-abortion sources affirm most of these abortions are not sought for extreme alleged medical emergencies, as their defenders insist. (Abortion, the killing of an innocent unborn baby, is never actually necessary to protect a mother’s health, nor is it justifiable.) A 2013 Guttmacher report admitted “data suggests that most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment,” and Warren Hern’s own published data found that “fetal abnormalities” ranged from just a fifth to a third of his patients – and that the most common of those “abnormalities” was Down syndrome, a condition that is neither a death sentence nor even a guarantee of an unhappy life.
Most frighteningly, in September 2024 the Family Research Council (FRC) wrote that “State-level abortion reporting statistics from nine states show that at least 277 infants have survived abortion since 2006.” Only eight states require reporting such data, and there are no federal reporting requirements on the subject, guaranteeing that the real number is higher. Several former abortion industry insiders and policy scholars have told Congress or admitted under oath that infanticide after failed abortions happens beyond the notice of official numbers.
Yet for at least the past decade, congressional Democrats have consistently voted against both the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions after five months with exceptions for rape, incest, and “medical emergencies”; and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would mandate basic medical care for abortion-surviving newborns with penalties that existing law lacks.
