The PSD parliamentary group wants the Minister of Health to clarify whether she authorized the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) campaign on menstruation that uses the expression “people who menstruate” instead of “women”.
For this request for clarification from Ana Paula Martins, the Social Democratic bench used the question figure, asking the minister if she had prior knowledge of the campaign launched by the DGS on July 9th.
The issue at hand is an online questionnaire entitled “Let’s talk about menstruation?”, with the aim of “carrying out a diagnosis of the situation regarding menstrual health in Portugal”, and for which the DGS “invites all people who menstruate to participate”.
The PSD bench considered that, instead of using the word “women” in this initiative, the DGS “opted for the expression people who menstruate” in a campaign that “motivated strong opposition and controversy among civil society”.
“It turns out that the change in language derives from the ideology defended by some and not from science. It seems to me that an entity like the DGS, due to its purposes and reason for existence, should be the first entity to use science as the basis for its actions”, states the question signed by MP Bruno Vitorino.
In view of this, the PSD wants to know whether the Minister of Health authorized the terms in which the campaign was launched and “why the DGS changed the word “woman” to “person who menstruates” and on what scientific basis it supported this “new interpretation”.
It also questions which national legislation or decision by a sovereign body “dictated the approval of the change in language to that used by the DGS”.
Source: expresso.pt
