The sole deputies of Livre and PAN urgently want to hear Health Minister Manuel Pizarro in parliament about, among other things, alleged restrictions on access to voluntary termination of pregnancy in public hospitals.
In a request addressed to the Chairman of the Parliamentary Health Committee, the Social Democrat António Maló de Abreu, Livre requests that, in addition to the Minister, the Director of the National Health Service (SNS), Fernando Araújo, the General Director of Health, Graça Freitas, and the Head of the Sexual, Reproductive, Child and Adolescent Health Department of the General Directorate of Health, Dinah Oliveira.
In the text, the party, represented in the Assembly of the Republic by Deputy Rui Tavares, recalls that from 2007 termination of pregnancy at the request of the woman became legal up to 10 weeks of pregnancy and since then “known numbers of voluntary terminations of pregnancy have declined and procedures are being performed safely without endangering women’s lives”.
“Despite what is provided for in the law, access to the SNS to perform a voluntary termination of pregnancy is neither easy nor guaranteed, as has been repeatedly denounced and as revealed in the Diário de Notícias report of February 11 they write.
Livre defends that “access to IVG is a public health issue and a human right that the country must guarantee” and stresses that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) had already noted with concern in July 2022 the uneven application of Law No. The Portuguese State must ensure the effective implementation of the law in all regions of the country and for all women”.
also the The only deputy of the PAN, Inês Sousa Real, filed a request on Monday to hear Manuel Pizarro, as well as the Inspector General of Health Activities, António Carlos Caeiro Carapeto, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Sofia Regulatory Body Nogueira da Silva, and the person in charge of the Safe Abortion Committee of the International Federation of Gynecology, Teresa Bombas.
The deputy of PAN defends that the information reported by DN “and the obstacles reported therein, if confirmed, constitute an unacceptable regression of the rights enshrined in law No. 16/2007 of April 17, and as such they demand, in addition to a thorough clarification, corrective measures that protect the reproductive rights recognized to women by the legislation in force”.
That is the PAN’s plan “the Assembly of the Republic is conducting a wide range of hearings to clarify the obstacles to GBVI described above (and the existence of other situations in addition to those reported) and to assess the necessary corrective actions to ensure that women’s reproductive rights enshrined” in the law “are fully and scrupulously respected and that situations such as reported do not occur again”.
The PS has already announced that it urgently wants to hear the Director-General of Health, Graça Freitas, in parliament, and the BE also asked to hear the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro.
In 2007, a national referendum allowed women in Portugal to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks in a recognized health facility capable of doing so. Before that, abortion was punished and criminalized.
Source: DN
