Argentina's criminal prohibition of abortion in the 1950s

Argentina's criminal prohibition of abortion in the 1950s made clandestine medical work a serious legal risk. In the book, the ban is not merely background: it structures Josef Mengele’s return to medical practice in Buenos Aires, then turns that work into the immediate cause of his arrest when a patient dies and an informant identifies him to police.

Legal Setting and Clandestine Practice

The account describes abortion as a crime severely punished in Catholic Argentina. That legal environment drives wealthy families seeking to avoid the birth of a child to seek clandestine help rather than risk public exposure. Willem Sassen, a friend of Mengele, occasionally sent him such cases, treating the work as both lucrative and suited to Mengele’s medical skills.

Mengele accepted the referrals after years spent working as a labourer and farmer. He had recovered his briefcase of medical samples and instruments, including scalpels, blades, and pliers, and saw the work as a return to medical practice. The law’s prohibition thus coexisted with a hidden service for clients able to reach a doctor through private connections; the account presents the practice as concealed, not as legally permitted care.

Exposure of the Network

The danger became immediate after the daughter of a major industrialist died following an abortion. She was not yet fifteen. A doctor in custody denounced colleagues to the police, who dismantled a network of practitioners. The case transformed private, clandestine activity into a public scandal, reported in newspapers under sensational headlines.

During his arrest, Mengele was told that the doctor had identified him by the name Gregor. Police accused him of illegal medical practice, clandestine abortions, and corrupting the nation’s moral order. He denied the charges, then offered to pay to have the matter hushed up. He was detained; on the third day, an officer asked how much he would pay, and Mengele increased his offer. He subsequently returned home, exhausted and distressed. The episode shows the prohibition operating through both formal policing and corruption: the network was exposed, but money secured his release from custody.

Medical Ethics and the Book’s Wider Contrast

The abortion case is set against a much larger record of medical abuse. At Auschwitz concentration camp, Mengele directed coercive experiments on twins, including painful tests, and the subjects were killed so their bodies could be examined. His own later defence to Rolf cast his actions as a duty to German science and as a means of saving lives, a claim at odds with the survivors’ testimony about his practices.

In early 1964, the universities of Frankfurt and Munich withdrew Mengele’s doctoral degrees in medicine and anthropology, citing his violation of the Hippocratic Oath and his murders at Auschwitz. This later professional sanction did not arise from the Argentine abortion case. Read together, however, the episodes expose the gap between medical credentials and ethical conduct: Mengele treated clandestine procedures in Buenos Aires as a route back into practice, while his earlier use of medical authority at Auschwitz had made that authority inseparable from coercion and murder.