Russian MPs back adoption ban on countries allowing gender reassignment

Lawmakers in the Duma said they wanted to ensure that adopted children would not go through gender-reassignment – Copyright AFP DENIS LOVROVIC

Russia’s parliament Wednesday voted to back a bill banning the adoption of Russian children in countries that allow gender reassignment, the latest in a series of ultra-conservative social measures.

Moscow has long portrayed itself as a bulwark against liberal values, but that trend has hugely accelerated since the Kremlin launched its Ukraine offensive, further rupturing ties with the West. 

The bill would ban citizens of countries that authorise “the change of sex by medical intervention, including with the use of medicine”, or allow individuals to change their gender on official identity documents. 

Lawmakers said they wanted to ensure that adopted children would not go through gender-reassignment. 

Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin welcomed the advance of the bill.

“With this law we are protecting the child, we are doing everything for the child not to end up in a country where same-sex marriage and sex change is allowed,” he said.

Volodin earlier this month gave an interview to Russian media in which he said Europe and the US are “sick” for allowing gender-reassignment, attacking people “who were men yesterday and who today call themselves women.” 

Lawmakers voted almost unanimously to back the proposed law in a first reading, with 397 in favour and one against. 

The bill still needs to be passed in two more readings and approved by the upper chamber before it can be signed into law by Putin.

– Adoption virtually stopped –

The foreign adoption of Russian children has fallen drastically since 2012, when Moscow banned Americans from adopting. It has virtually stopped completely since the Ukraine offensive in 2022.  

In 2023, only six Russian children were adopted by foreign citizens, according to official figures.   

According to government figures cited in Russian media, 358,000 children were in care homes at the start of the year.

Children waiting to be adopted have been caught in the fallout of the conflict in Ukraine, with Moscow having considered a ban on adopting into “unfriendly countries” since 2022.

There are also now the logistical complications of physically getting to Russia.

These latest proposals are a new version of a bill put forward in 2022 that aimed to ban the adoption of Russian children by parents from “unfriendly countries” — a term Moscow uses to refer to countries that have sanctioned Russia for its Ukraine offensive.

An explainer on the State Duma website said the bill aimed to ban the adoption of Russian children by “NATO countries”.

MP Nina Ostatina, one of the bill’s authors, said: “The hybrid war unleashed against us touches our children… Russia has become an outpost on preserving traditional values.”

Russia has created an inhospitable environment for LBGTQ people for years. In July 2023, it banned the “international LGBT movement” as extremist and made gender reassignment illegal.

President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly mocked people who have undergone gender reassignment and LGBTQ people.