Russian lawmakers have voted to shut foreign families out of adopting Russian children if they live in a country where gender reassignment surgery is legal. Both houses of parliament passed the bill, and President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign it.
About 15 countries fall under the ban, among them Canada, Australia and a long list of European states. Russia already kept U.S. citizens from adopting its children under a 2012 law passed after relations between Moscow and Washington soured.
Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house and one of the bill’s authors, said removing the risk of “gender reassignment” was crucial to protecting adopted children. Supporters of the bill made the same case, describing a danger to children placed in homes abroad.
Fines for child-free messaging
Lawmakers passed a second measure alongside the adoption ban. It makes it a crime to spread material that encourages people to stay child-free. Offenders face fines of up to 5 million rubles, roughly $50,000.
Backers say such campaigns feed Russia’s falling population. Some of them call this part of a “Western agenda” meant to weaken the country.
A longer run of restrictions
Putin has made the birth rate a national priority and has urged families to have more children. In 2023 Russia banned gender-transition procedures outright, and the Supreme Court labelled the LGBTQ+ movement an extremist ideology.
Critics inside Russia and abroad call the new rules discriminatory. Activists say the adoption ban and the child-free law stigmatize different kinds of families and cut the number of options for Russian children still waiting for homes. Several of the targeted countries, in Europe and North America especially, have voiced unease at the policy.
