ABSTRACT
Victims of National Socialism became subjects of coercive medical experiments not only in life but also in death, when their bodies were used for further research. Some investigations were even situated at the boundary between life and death, such as the collaborative studies by Karl Ehrhardt, and Alfred Pischinger, at the University of Graz. In 1945 Ehrhardt took up the question of foetal breathing again after additional experiments on pregnant women and their foetuses. In any discussion of the potential abuse of pregnant women for medical experiments it is important to consider the specific dates, places and reasons for the abortions and sterilisations in their political context. In Nazi Germany, legal abortions for eugenic reasons were only performed in conjunction with the forced sterilisation of the woman concerned. The abuse of women for scientific experiments in general followed an older tradition, which treated poor and disenfranchised patients as "material" for research and medical education.
