The Health Inspectorate Has Opened a Formal Case Into the Almada Hospital That Closed Its Termination Clinic, the Fifth Abortion-Access Process Since 2023

Portugal's health inspectorate has opened a formal inspection of the hospital that closed its unwanted-pregnancy clinic last month. The Inspeção-Geral das Atividades em Saúde (Inspectorate-General of Health Activities, IGAS) confirmed that process 104/2026-INS was opened on 27 August by order of Inspector-General António Carapeto, a week after it received a submission "concerning the organisation of care provided to women who seek voluntary termination of pregnancy in the area of the Unidade Local de Saúde de Almada-Seixal".

The trigger is the decision of 10 August at the Hospital Garcia de Orta in Almada, which suspended its termination consultation and began referring patients to a private clinic. The inspection is not into the decision itself so much as into how it was carried out and how care is now organised for the women affected.

The information trail

On the same day the consultation closed, the hospital discontinued the email address through which patients had been requesting information. Two weeks later, on 25 August, its website still pointed to that dead address and still stated that the procedure was performed at Garcia de Orta. That text has since changed, but what replaced it remains unclear about where a woman in the Almada and Seixal area should now go. The hospital was asked twice by the press about the route patients should follow, and did not answer.

Five cases in three years

By the inspectorate's own count this is the fifth process it has opened on termination of pregnancy since 2023, and the sequence matters because of what the first one already told hospitals to do.

• 007/2023-INS, opened 15 February 2023. Its final report recommended that every unit publish the fact that it does not perform terminations, and publish the referral route. It also warned that failure to follow IGAS recommendations "may give rise to a new inspection action, as well as communication to the supervising ministry and other appropriate bodies".
• 023/2023-FIS, opened 14 June 2023 into a private clinic after the regulator passed on a complaint about a refused pharmacological termination. Concluded 29 October 2023: the clinic did not offer that method beyond seven weeks, so the refusal matched its own procedures and the law.
• 314/2024-ESC, opened 13 August 2024 into five hospitals in the north after a patient asked why the deadlines in Lei 16/2007 and Portaria 741-A/2007 were not being met. Concluded 20 June 2025, finding breaches of deadlines, notably at the Unidade Local de Saúde de São João.
• A fourth process was opened against São João on the same day those conclusions were announced.
• 104/2026-INS, Almada-Seixal, opened 27 August 2026.

The Entidade Reguladora da Saúde (Health Regulatory Authority, ERS) had already asked the Almada hospital for explanations in late August, over departures from recommendations both regulators issued after their 2023 audits of termination services.

What this means for residents

• The right is unchanged. Termination on request within ten weeks remains lawful under Lei 16/2007. What is in question is whether a public hospital that stops providing it has met its duty to say so plainly and to say where to go instead.
• Check before you travel. If you live on the Setúbal peninsula, do not rely on a hospital website. Call SNS 24 or the unit directly and confirm the referral route in advance.
• Two complaint routes exist. The ERS takes complaints about access to care from any user, including foreign residents, and IGAS acts on submissions of the kind that opened this file.
• It fits a regional pattern. Lisbon units have redirected obstetric emergencies through the summer, and parliament has separately removed obstetric violence from the statute book.

IGAS has previously ordered money repaid when it found irregular practice, as it did in the Santa Maria dermatology case. Here the remedy, if it finds one is needed, is more likely to be an instruction about information: telling women where the service went.