Damares Alves tries to give a fake fetus to Sílvio Almeida – 04/27/2023 – Health

In a public hearing this Thursday (27), former minister and now senator Damares Alves (Republicanos-DF) and her colleague Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) tried to deliver a fake fetus to the current minister, Silvio Almeida, who declined on behalf of her daughter and hit back at what she called “performance” and “mockery”.

The session took place at the Senate Human Rights Commission. Damares also stated that he has compassion for the minister and that he “hopes for him to succeed”, adding that he makes “mistakes due to lack of information”. She left the meeting before the end.

The minister was applauded more than once by those present, including when he refused the fetus and when he criticized the military dictatorship.

“I’m going to leave you with a 12-week-old baby. If you can take it with affection and we understand that this is what we wanted to do, this little baby here will have guaranteed rights”, said Damares Alves, before her colleague, Girão, get up to hand the fake fetus to the minister.

“In the name of my unborn daughter, I refuse to receive [o feto de plástico]”, countered Silvio Almeida.

“I don’t want to receive that, because I’m going to be a father now and I know very well what that means. That for me is a performance that I deeply repudiate. With all due respect, [isso] it is an unacceptable exploitation of a very serious problem that we have in the country”, he added.

When minister, Damares acted to prevent a ten-year-old girl, who became pregnant after being raped, from having an abortion.

The operation coordinated by the minister was aimed at transferring the child from São Mateus (ES), where she lived, to a hospital in Jacareí (SP), where she would await the evolution of the pregnancy and have the baby, despite the risk to the girl’s life.

To this end, Damares sent to the city of Espírito Santo representatives of the ministry and political allies who tried to delay the interruption of the pregnancy and, in a series of meetings, put pressure on those responsible for conducting the procedures, including offering improvements to the local tutelary council.

Damares herself participated in at least one of these meetings via video call, as shown by photos obtained at the time by Sheet.

People involved in the process also claim that the minister’s representatives would be responsible for leaking the child’s name to activist Sara Giromini, who disclosed it on social networks.

The girl’s exposure violates the Child and Adolescent Statute and made the victim’s family the target of threats and pressure.

The case came to light on August 7, 2020, when it was revealed that the girl had become pregnant after four years of recurrent rape by a non-consanguineous uncle.

During the Senate hearing, before the confusion, Damares Alves spoke criticizing Silvio’s management at the head of the portfolio and Brazil’s departure from the Geneva Consensus, an alliance of conservative countries in defense of the traditional family and against abortion.

In an ironic tone, the former holder of the folder also claimed to have “compassion” for the current minister, said that he “is starting” in office and that she hopes for him to work out.

“I think that your advisors are not providing you with accurate information, and that is very dangerous for a manager, because this could even lead to lawsuits. So be careful with the statements”, said the former minister.

“When you speak, take the correct data that are in the reports, don’t let your advisor mislead you […] you make some mistakes, perhaps due to lack of information”, he added.

Silvio Almeida defended his advisers and said that the information is corroborated by decisions of the Federal Supreme Court, which in the last four years declared unconstitutional a series of measures taken by Damares in the ministry.

He criticized the previous administration, which, according to him, left the portfolio with little budget, and said that it was necessary to get R$ 4 million for supplementary credit to resume the participatory councils, dismantled in the Bolsonaro administration.

Silvio Almeida also stated that he more than doubled the budget for protection programs for human rights defenders and witness protection.

“In the name of compassion, we are not here to be hypocritical. We know very well what the previous government thought about policies of memory, truth, justice and non-repetition. We know that the previous president liked dictatorship, that he praised torturers”, he said.

He stated that the departure from the Geneva Consensus had the support of the Itamaraty and the Ministry of Health. And he said that the group is made up of regimes “that don’t like democracy at all”, such as Saudi Arabia and Hungary.