Pro-life people rejoiced when Dr. Warren Hern retired in January of this year and then closed his Boulder, Colo., abortion clinic in April.
Hern performed late-term abortions in his infamous Boulder clinic for over 50 years. He saw over 45,000 abortion clients and an estimated 40,000 of those were abortions on second and third trimester babies.
Because abortion has no gestational limits in Colorado, the state has become a destination for late-term abortions. Hern’s clinic was one of five in the country that performed abortions throughout all trimesters. There were 137 abortion performed at 28 weeks or later in Colorado in 2023 — well into the time when a baby could live outside the womb with medical help and attention.
But in Hern’s absence, his employees are carrying the torch of late-term abortion onward.
“Determined to continue their mission, the employees are now forming a new clinic in Boulder called the RISE Collective, which stands for Reproductive Health, Inclusive Care, Support and Empowerment,” 9News reports. “The new clinic will focus on the same type of care the former clinic provided and is scheduled to open later this summer.”
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The Mission Statement, Vision Statement, and Core Values for RISE are listed on a GoFundMe page for the group.
Their Mission Statement in part reads, “to provide the highest standard of later abortion care and is grounded in the tenets of compassionate empowerment, sustainable access, and equity. We work to ensure that every person has access to safe reproductive and gender-affirming healthcare with a humanized experience and respectful support.”
Their Vision Statement says, “We envision a world where all people have the freedom and resources to make decisions about their bodies and futures—without barriers, stigma, or fear.”
Finally, among the Core Values, you see sentences like, “We provide care that is rooted in empathy, trust, and deep respect for each individual’s dignity and autonomy,” “Compassionate empowerment means combining emotional support with honest information and unwavering belief in our patients’ right to choose,” and “We perform safe, high-quality abortion care.”
It is quite obvious the former Hern employees do not see the unborn baby as a human person. If they did, everything in their various statements would be contradictory to them. Given that we know unborn humans are still human persons even before birth, the statements seem absolutely ludicrous.
Safe, high quality later abortion care still ends in the death of a baby.
The humanized experience still ends up with a dead human.
The world they envision with freedom still ends up with dead children.
The care that is rooted in respect for individual autonomy and dignity ends up violating the dignity and autonomy of vulnerable humans, ultimately killing them.
The honest information they provide women obviously leaves out the fact that these employees are there to kill her child.
Tweet This: Safe, high quality later abortion care still ends in the death of a baby.
This future abortion clinic opening is ironic, considering Colorado recently passed a law extending paid family leave to cover parents who have a baby in a NICU. That same baby in the NICU could be aborted elsewhere in the state, perhaps even at the same hospital, if the mother had wanted a different pregnancy outcome.
While Hern’s clinic is closed and RISE is not yet open, vulnerable human lives are being saved each day with pregnancy help, and for that we can rejoice.
But keep an eye out on RISE in Boulder, Colorado.
You can pray against their opening. If you’re local, consider joining the Sidewalk Advocates for Life group there if the clinic does open and sidewalk advocates are needed. Consider volunteering at or donating to the Boulder Pregnancy Resource Center. There are so many ways the pro-life movement can show the Boulder community and pregnant women that they do not need abortion.
References
- Moreno, Alicia. “RISE Collective to ensure abortion access in Boulder, CO,” May 20, 2025. GoFundMe website
