Overview:
After the Boulder Abortion Clinic closed, RISE Collective announced that it would step up to provide critical late-term services.
Following Dr. Warren Hern’s decision to retire and close the Boulder Abortion Clinic in April, the RISE Collective is stepping in to replace the clinic and ensure continued access to reproductive health care in the area. The new organization was founded shortly after the closing of the Boulder Abortion Clinic by former staff members.
“It’s really important to me,” said former CEO of Boulder Abortion Clinic Alicia Moreno, who is among the seventeen ex-employees who created RISE. “We have staff members who, over the years, have seen medical and social comorbidities. There’s a lot of overlap between people who come to find this care, who are in a domestic violence situation, or they’re homeless, or they have substance abuse issues. These are not simple choices that people wake up and make.”
The Boulder Abortion Clinic has provided reproductive care and abortions to women for over 50 years, especially in critical late-term services that other facilities don’t perform. Its closure left a critical gap in coverage in Colorado, so RISE Collective has stepped in to make sure access to the services remains available.
“Boulder abortion clinic has specialized for 50 years in later care,” Moreno said. “There were only five clinics doing that, so now there’s four, so we need to get back into this space, because people have less choice now.”
RISE Collective has yet to find a place, and there is no set timetable for an opening due to the Boulder real estate market, but they are trying to find something as soon as possible. The organization currently has a website and has set up a GoFundMe page that seeks to raise $50,000 to find a building. Since the launch of the fundraiser on May 20, RISE Collective has raised just under $14,000, which is roughly 27 percent of its stated goal.
“Really the biggest thing holding us back is real estate,” Moreno said. “We have to find something suitable, and there’s lots that goes into that. Not only is this a medical facility, so we need specific things built out, but there’s zoning in Boulder. And then, even regardless of zoning, we have to make sure that the landlord is okay with renting to us, or if we’re able to buy a building, that there’s safety and security that we’re able to put into place to keep people safe. It can’t be in the middle of a residential neighborhood.”
Moreno believes that in this climate, where reproductive rights have been eroded across the country, people must have as much access as possible, particularly in states like Colorado. She believes that the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the recent presidential election have had an impact on clinics in states such as Colorado due to the massive influx of out-of-state patients.
“Colorado is almost becoming a sanctuary state for quality, for gender-affirming care, for abortion care,” Moreno said. “Colorado does not have a maximum requirement [of months]. And since now there are so many banned states, almost half the states are banned or near-banned, even states that have earlier care available, those waiting lines are long. It’s pushing people into needing later care.”
Because of the increase in the number of people seeking abortions in Colorado, the staff was surprised to learn that Hern, after over fifty years of operation, was retiring and closing the Boulder Abortion Clinic. Although the staff had been working on a transition plan to take over the clinic after Hern’s retirement, the plan was never finalized, and he ultimately decided to close rather than hand it over to the next generation.
“BAC [Boulder Abortion Clinic] was something that he created, and I don’t know if he could see it exist without him,” Moreno told Boulder Reporting Lab in mid-May. “His identity was so intertwined. He was BAC. BAC was him. It’s got to be really hard.”
Hern is a nationally recognized physician and doctor who established the nation’s first private abortion clinic in 1975, and one of only a few that provide care after 28 weeks of pregnancy. He wrote important articles about abortion and several different books, including his most recent one, “Abortion in the Age of Unreason: A Doctor’s Account of Caring for Women Before and After Roe V. Wade,” which was published in September 2024.
“You know, I’ve been doing this for over 50 years, 55 years, and it’s a long time to be doing anything, and I’m 87 next month,” Hern told Bucket List Community Cafe. “I had observed the 50th anniversary of my clinic being open in January, and it seemed like a good time to close that chapter of my life.”
Hern feels very privileged to have done the work he has done and has accomplished what he set out to do when he started. However, he also believes that the overturning of Roe V. Wade in 2022 has completely changed the structure of abortion care in the U.S.
“It became increasingly difficult for women to get here from other parts of the country,” Hern said. “We had patients booked out two to three weeks.”
Since 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, twelve states have enacted near-outright bans, four more have done so after six weeks, two after 12 weeks and one after 18 weeks. Additionally, in states such as Texas, physicians who perform an abortion could face serious legal consequences, such as the loss of a medical license or jail time.
Colorado has no abortion restrictions, which means that women from other states frequently come to the Boulder Abortion Clinic due to restrictions in their states. This problem has only gotten worse since Roe v. Wade was reversed. Over the years, Hern and his colleagues have faced immeasurable amounts of death threats and harassment. Several of his colleagues have been assassinated by anti-choice terrorists.
“We’ve had numerous demonstrations, innumerable death threats, and I work behind four layers of bulletproof windows,” Hern said. “Everybody on my staff has been under death threats basically since 1973 [when he founded the Boulder Valley Health Center], and we’ve had to live with that. It tires you out. It’s very difficult. It messes up your life.”
Despite the closing of the clinic, there are still abortion services available to people around the Boulder area. Boulder Valley Health Center and Planned Parenthood provide abortion care to those in need. Though RISE Collective looks to open as soon as possible, there are a lot of mixed feelings about the future of reproductive rights across the country.
While polling data suggests that the majority of Americans support the right to choose to some extent, there are still substantial restrictions across the country, which could be exacerbated by the recent election and future Supreme Court decisions. Moreno does have optimism due to younger generations, while Hern is more pessimistic.
“The Republican Party has used the abortion issue to get power for the last 50 years, and they’ve succeeded beyond all expectations,” Hern said. “I think that I’ve done my part. I’m very pessimistic about the future of this because of Republican power.”
So far, the Trump administration has not been super focused on the abortion issue; however, they have already made nationwide changes in law. Just last week, they revoked emergency abortion guidelines for hospitals across the country. The guidelines were provided by the Biden administration in 2022, just weeks after the overturning of Roe V. Wade.
While Hern reflects on the long, difficult path that led to the Boulder Abortion Clinic’s national prominence and eventual closure, those stepping forward to carry the torch see themselves as part of a larger historical continuum. For Moreno and her colleagues at RISE Collective, the fight for reproductive justice is far from over. In their view, the legal rollback of abortion rights isn’t just a policy shift—it’s a troubling echo of the past.
“I’m at CU Boulder, getting my PHD in history, and this is just history repeating itself,” Moreno said. She hopes that people can understand the complex decisions many people make when getting an abortion and the historical precedent that abortion bans set. “These are bodies being policed.”