THERE’S A STRONG ELEMENT of wishful thinking in the idea that Bill Clinton is an unprincipled poll surfer; he was brought around on welfare reform, some conservatives argue, and he can probably be brought around on most anything else. This may be a misreading of the president, especially on the subject of late abortions. He has taken a very lonely stand in their favor — a stand for the right to extract a near-term fetus. That positions him at the fringe of the issue — three-quarters of Americans oppose the practice. It also makes him, whether he likes it or not, a political ally of people like Colorado abortionist Warren Hern, whose worldview will probably strike most Americans as every bit as unsettling as David Duke’s.
Dr. Hern, by design or otherwise, is not very well known in policy circles. His name did pop up just before the election when he engaged in a remarkable exchange with pro-choice Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. Cohen, who had initially supported the availability of late abortions, later wrote a column confessing a grave unease. “Late-term abortions once seemed to be the choice of women who, really, had no other choice,” Cohen concluded. “The facts now are different. If that’s the case, then so should be the law.”
This drew a quick response from Hern, a member of the medical advisory board of the National Abortion Federation. His own practice at the Boulder Abortion Clinic is, in his words, “internationally known as specializing in late abortion.” Hern complained that, among other things, Bob Dole and unnamed “anti-abortion fanatics” were misleading the public, all for the purpose of criminalizing some procedures, including partial-birth abortion.
Because Hern is, by his own description, one of the “very few physicians who provide third-trimester abortions,” he is a primary beneficiary of President Clinton’s advocacy of abortion at any stage. So if it is fair to ask political leaders who support anti-quota legislation if they support David Duke’s onerous worldview, it is at least as fair — and in fact much fairer — to ask the president if he shares Hern’s assumptions. Hem, after all, is not at the fringe of his issue. He holds a central position among the abortion elite.
He’s also spooky as hell.
There are three aspects of late abortions that most Americans will find unsettling. First, the procedure itself. Second, the secrecy that surrounds the industry. Third, the philosophical beliefs that animate late-term abortionists. Hern speaks directly to each.
Hern’s 1984 book, Abortion Practice, contains the sort of language that turns American stomachs during any discussion of late abortion, including this electrifying passage in a section about abortions at 21 to 24 weeks: “A long curved Mayo scissors may be necessary to decapitate and dismember the fetus, since it may be impossible to apply forceps or to do so while avoiding the thinned-out cervix.”
One need not dwell on these unpleasantries to underscore the horror of late abortions. The point is perhaps best made in a 1978 survey by Hern and an assistant of attitudes toward the dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure on the part of 15 present and former staff members of Hern’s clinic. Their reactions to “viewing the fetus” ranged from
‘I haven’t looked’ to shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear, and sadness. Attitudes toward the doctor were those of sympathy, wonder at how he could perform the procedure at all, and a desire to protect him from the trauma. Two felt that it must eventually damage him psychologically. . . . Two respondents described dreams in which they had related to the procedure. Both described dreams of vomiting fetuses along with a sense of horror. Other dreams revolved around a need to protect others from viewing fetal parts dreaming that she herself was pregnant and needed an abortion or was having a baby.
Hern and his co-author, however, had a slightly different take on the subject: “We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denial of an act of destruction by the operator. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.” A somewhat ghoulish observation, one might suggest, and perhaps a lot ghoulish. Even the most devoted Quentin Tarantino fan, after hearing this passage, would have cause to reflect that the abortion elite are a bit different from you and me.
Hern does, however, recommend that his colleagues take pains to keep the particulars of their trade from public scrutiny. He evidently understands that most Americans, if they knew what the abortion providers were up to, might consider them every bit as fanatical as the people who chant slogans outside clinics.
“It is in the interest of the abortion service to use the social status of the physician and the legitimate medical activity associated with the physician to overcome community resistance to the abortion service,” he has written. “For the physician, particularly one in solo practice, this can mean establishing, displaying, or maintaining all the substance and appearance of a ‘normal’ professional status to the extent possible and obtaining, by proxy, acceptance of one’s activity with regards to abortion.”
This policy of secrecy and obfuscation extends to the patients themselves. ” This is a controversial area, but most professionals in the field feel that it is not advisable for patients to view the products of conception, to be told the sex of the fetus, or to be informed of a multiple pregnancy.” Similarly, in a section of his book dedicated to “Dealing With The News Media, ” Hern advises that physicians and administrators “should provide as much factual information as possible, but the information should be appropriate for public consumption. Television interviews, in particular, should focus on the public issue involved (right to confidential and professional medical care, freedom of choice, and so forth) and not on the specific details of the abortion procedures.”
This penchant for clouding the issue sometimes reaches a level that is, to put it as generously as possible, comic. In a 1991 letter to the Rocky Mountain News, Hern complained that a columnist’s “characterization of me in his April 29th column as ‘Boulder abortionist Warren Hern’ was a deliberate insult that reveals his antipathy toward me, toward the cause I serve, and toward women.” The word abortionist, Hern insisted, is a ” demeaning, degrading term that conveys evil and disgrace.”
This from a man who has elsewhere bragged of performing tens of thousands of abortions. The level of absurdity would be no higher should Michael DeBakey complain about being called a cardiologist.
Taken together, the nature of the procedures and the secrecy surrounding the industry are unsettling enough. Of deeper significance, however, are the philosophical beliefs of this late-term abortionist.
Hern minces no words. “The relationship between the gravid [pregnant] female and the fetoplacental unit can be understood best as one of host and parasite,” he writes in Abortion Practice. This single sentence draws a dramatic distinction between those who take the traditional view that life is a sacred gift and those whose search for truth has led them in the opposite direction. Fetoplacental unit? That sounds like an expression that might fall from the lips of Ma or Pa Conehead. It has the same effect as Hern’s relegation of human life to tapeworm status. Though Hern fancies himself a humanist, his language is thoroughly dehumanizing.
This creepy view extends to those units living far beyond the womb. After the Boulder Daily Camera criticized Hern’s comparison of humanity to the most feared of diseases, he offered this response: “As Marcus Aurelius said, ‘For I seek the truth, by which no man was ever hurt.’ The idea that the human species is a cancer on the planet is a powerful metaphor that may help explain reality and predict events.”
Coming from a garden-variety environmentalist, a comparison of humanity to cancer is an eye-roller. It takes on a more chilling aspect when delivered by an abortion practitioner.
The unconventional beliefs of various pro-lifers, gun enthusiasts, militiamen, and even, in the 1992 election, Dan Quayle’s wife’s parents’ minister all became media staples. The unwillingness to publicize the jarring views of the abortion elite offers more proof that most reporters and commentators are not so much pro-choice as they are defenders of practices that Richard Cohen, among many others, finds incompatible with reasonable and civilized behavior. The president should have some explaining to do. But somehow, he’s never asked about it.
Dave Shiflett is a writer living in northern Virginia.
