I’ve been thinking long and hard this morning on whether or not I would blog the following story, as it is one that can seriously inflame passions on the abortion subject. In the end, I felt that it was worth it. Broken windows into abortion doctor’s life
 At the Boulder Abortion Clinic, Dr. Warren Hern leaves no window uncovered.
Full-length blinds shroud the bulletproof entryway; in his office, vinyl shades block a small window.
This is one of the facts of Hern’s life — no windows, ever. That was how Dr. Barnett Slepian’s killer shot him in upstate New York, through a kitchen window. Slepian, like Hern, performed abortions.
“I can’t sit in front of an open window. The shades have to be drawn,” Hern said.
After Slepian’s shooting in 1998, Hern predicted another would follow. “Will I get to live out my life?” he asked in a newspaper column in 2001. “. . . Who’s next?”
Interesting that Dr. Hern should ask that. It is rather ironic, is it not, since his business revolves around death. Now, I’ve said before that I usually do not get involved in the abortion debate, except with late term abortions and parental notification. I find abortions horrible, but, do not take the position that there should be none ever. There are times when they are necessary medically. But, it does say something about what Dr. Hern has chosen his life’s business to be when he has to live a windowless life, be surrounded by body guards, and constantly worry and fear for his life like a mafia don, does it not?
Hern has been familiar with the hazards for decades. After performing abortions for more than half of his life, the 70-year-old doctor has never been injured, but the constant threats with which he has lived since 1973 have transformed his life into a series of security measures: sleeping with a rifle, scanning rooftops for snipers, wearing a protective vest.
“It ruins your life,” Hern said.
At least some have a life to be ruined. And then there is that whole “personal responsibility” issue, which Hern should man up to, since this is the life he chose.
As he studied medicine, Hern said he encountered women ill from botched illegal abortions. In the early 1970s, Hern — who had planned to become an epidemiologist — became convinced that the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion would mean nothing if doctors would not perform them.
“I felt doing abortions was the most important thing I could do with my life,” he said.
Scary thought.
Even early on in his practice, Hern did not shy away from confrontation. When people protested outside his office, he stood in the parking lot and wrote down their license plates. When they shouted during his speeches, he shouted louder. When a protester hurled a rock through a clinic window, Hern hung up a sign: “This window was broken by those who hate freedom.”
Violence against these doctors is not the answer. We are a Nation of Law, not a Nation of Men. But, I wonder about this “freedom” he speaks of? Is it the freedom to have casual, unprotected sex with people you do not want to have children with, as Ann Coulter puts it in Godless?
Interestingly, the LA Times forgot one thing: Dr. Hern is one of the few abortion doctors that will perform late term abortions, except in slight passing late in the story
In time, he began to focus on more difficult abortions performed in the later weeks of pregnancy — typically, he said, because of medical complications or fetuses with abnormalities. Such abortions now make up the bulk of his practice.
I think it is rather important information to be aware of, eh? This is the same Dr. Hern that said in a 1996 interview on 60 minutes that “there’s no such thing” as partial birth abortion, and that no doctor he knew would perform it.
Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU
Teach said: But, it does say something about what Dr. Hern has chosen his life’s business to be when he has to live a windowless life, be surrounded by body guards, and constantly worry and fear for his life like a mafia don, does it not?
Yes, it says he lives in a country where he has to fear for his life from people who disagree with his choice to provide women access to safe and legal abortions.
This is a very difficult subject and I understand the concern for innocent unborn children who have no voice in this. I also understand the frustration that too often abortion is used as a form of birth control. But there are also times when abortion is appropriate and doctors who perform them shouldn’t have to live in fear for providing women access to safe medical care – even ones who perform late-term abortions.
He made the choice, Silke. And, while I disagree with people threatening him and others, not to mention violence and murder, many people see what he is doing as murder, and a government that allows it.
Teach said: He made the choice, Silke.
You make it sound as if he deserves what he gets. What if every doctor in America was afraid to perform a legal abortion? What would happen to those women who were raped? What about the rare case where the fetus threatens the life of the mother? Don’t these women deserve access to safe medical care?