A police raid in Buenos Aires (Argentina), initiated to find a 12-year-old raped girl, uncovered the backroom of a medical center habitually dedicated to performing abortions.
It all began in Monte Quemado, a town in northern Santiago del Estero, one of Argentina’s poorest provinces. A 12-year-old girl had disappeared while in the 32nd week of pregnancy, the result of sexual abuse. The provincial Justice system activated an interprovincial alert, and the investigation fell to the Superintendencia de Delitos Complejos of the Policía Bonaerense, which tracked the minor to a clinic in the Buenos Aires conurbation, more than a thousand kilometers from her home.
The girl had not arrived there on her own. The Fundación CIGESAR, an NGO based in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo and dedicated to facilitating access to abortion—whose website presents itself as a specialist in sexual health and «(non) reproductive»—organized and funded the transfer of the minor and her mother. According to local media reports, the prosecutor investigating the rape, Santiago Bridoux, learned unofficially that the transfer was underway but could not prevent it. When he tried to contact the foundation, a representative was «reluctant» to speak.
The doctor says he «did the right thing»
The abortion was performed on Friday, April 24, by Damián Levy, a doctor and president of CIGESAR, when the baby was eight months into gestation. Levy killed it and threw it in the trash. Days later, amid the media avalanche, he told TN that he felt «with the firm conviction of having done the right thing» and of having acted with «quality, respect, and professional ethics.»
8 fetuses in the trash
When the police arrived at the clinic, the facility’s director denied that the minor was admitted. The investigators found her already recovered from the procedure, and the mother stated that she did not know if her child had survived.
Upon inspecting the storage area, they found eight fetuses in the trash. The Buenos Aires provincial Ministry of Health inspected the clinic and issued its verdict: «Everything was in order.» The dead babies, they explained coldly, were awaiting removal as «pathological waste» by the contracted transportation company.
The destroyed evidence and the fugitive rapists
The baby’s death, endorsed by Argentina’s abortion law since 2020, did have one judicial consequence. The DNA was the key evidence to identify and convict the two suspects in the girl’s rape, who remain fugitives. The main accused is a direct relative of the victim. Prosecutor Bridoux had urged the judge to secure that sample before it was too late. He did not arrive in time. The media report it coldly: «the experts are now working to determine which of the eight babies found corresponds to the girl, in the hope that the genetic material is still recoverable.»