The BE coordinator, Catarina Martins, assured this Sunday that she will ask the government for “bills” on the reported cases of public hospitals refusing to carry out voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) and criticized those who “hypocritically say they knew nothing” .
“We can all be hypocritically surprised, but in 2008 the Bloco de Esquerda had already conducted a survey in which every health institution was asked how women’s rights were respected and the answer came to say that it was not respected,” said Catarina Martins.
In Porto, in the closing speech of the 1st LGBTQI+ forum taking place since Friday at the Soares dos Reis Artistic School, the leader of the blockers referred to the news released on Saturday by Diário de Notícias about public hospitals violating the abortion law and assured that BE will hold the government to account.
“Nobody here is surprised. We want to hold them accountable. We want to hold accountable a government that said it would guarantee that women’s rights were respected and did nothing and says it didn’t know,” said Catarina Martins.
On Saturday, questioned by the Lusa agency about this situation, the Health Ministry said it was “not aware of concrete cases of refusal of care” and underlined that “the availability of IVG consultations at the National Health Service is being evaluated”.
This Sunday, Catarina Martins recalled that this was one of the battles that gave rise to the creation of the Left Bloc and criticized the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro.
“As simple as that and as complicated as that. In fact, what has been approved in Parliament has yet to be done and we even have the Minister of Health who is surprised because he did not know that there are services in the National Health Service that are not comply with the law,” he criticized.
Catarina Martins addressed the audience who had previously shared several testimonials related to LGBTQI+ and used phrases such as “humiliation” and “disrespect” to refer to the subject of IVG and alleged non-compliance and dedicated the speech to “fighting for dignity, for equality and freedom” which, he said, “must be done every day”.
“They ask why there are so many letters. They divide, while the fight is the same. Yes, the fight is the same, but the oppression is so many, the oppression has so many forms. And each of the letters reveals one of the forms of oppression that have not yet been revealed and must be revealed in order to be fought.
Public school and TAP
Catarina Martins also recalled that she took part in the demonstration on Saturday that brought thousands of teachers to Lisbon, saying that fighting for public schools “is fighting so that everyone has a place and everyone has rights”.
In a small note devoted to the controversies surrounding TAP, Catarina Martins ended the speech with an analysis of what she called the “economy of privilege”.
“Let’s not kid ourselves. We live in times of massive inequality. Here was the call for us to be present with all the colors of our fights in all the battles to come. We are fighting against the economy of privilege. For these days the news was that David Neeleman bought TAP with TAP’s own money. The right knew it and made it happen. For those who have millions, anything goes. For those who live off their work, there is never a rule that protects,” he concludes.
Source: DN
