$500,000 Mill

It was no secret to the police that an efficient "abortion mill" was operating somewhere in New York City. Cops and detectives had worked for five weeks, tapping wires, spying through binoculars, loafing around in disguise, before they could put the finger on an apartment house in The Bronx. Some fine undercover work was done during the American Legion Convention by a policeman and a policewoman disguised as a Kansas Legionnaire and his wife.

Old Acquaintance. Before making their raid, the police and Assistant District Attorney Francis Xavier O'Brien waited until they were sure that the illegal operations were well underway. One afternoon last week 15 cops, some disguised as carpenters, others as moving men, surrounded the building and jimmied their way into apartment 36. In the kitchen, turned into a well-appointed operating room, they found an old acquaintance: Dr. Leopold W. A. Brandenburg, 61, of Union City, N.J., who has been having police trouble, off & on, since 1934.

When the cops arrived, Dr. Brandenburg was dressed in surgeon's gown and mask. A gynecologist who went along on the raid in case of a medical emergency said that the women patients (unlike most who go to abortionists) were getting almost every drug and precaution that they would get in a hospital.

The police say that Dr. Brandenburg had two assistants working in other states and operated in New York on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays. His organization, they say, performed eight to 14 abortions a day. At an average of $400 an operation, the mill should have grossed some $500,000 a year. The surgeons, of course, did not get all of it. Much went to steerers and lookouts.

New Trouble. Brandenburg's technical proficiency will do him little good before the law, which considers a well-performed abortion quite as criminal as a bungled one. The doctor's record will do him no good either. Dr. Brandenburg was first accused of performing abortions in 1942 (no conviction). His most publicized scrape was over an alleged surgical altering of a criminal's fingerprints (his three-year sentence for "concealing knowledge of a crime" was set aside on the ground that he had concealed no offense defined by federal statute).

After the fingerprints episode, Dr. Brandenburg was harried frequently by narcotics and abortion charges. When he was arrested last week he was out on bail while appealing one of each. Some laymen may find it hard to understand, but none of his troubles has yet affected his right to practice medicine and he is still a licensed physician in New Jersey.

The latest charge may give Dr. Brandenburg more trouble. When the cops swarmed into his operating room, they captured two women who had already been operated on and a third who was lying on the table. Although these patients had asked for operations (and had presumably paid the doctor), they turned state's evidence. In an abortion case, New York law holds the patient as guilty as the doctor.

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