Russian lawmakers want to ban adoptions by citizens of countries that permit gender-affirming surgery

There are roughly 288,000 children in Russia currently without parental care, and lawmakers are racing forward with legislation to tackle one of the greatest threats they think faces this group: what if they’re adopted by foreigners from countries where gender-affirming surgery is legal and one of the parents gets this surgery and then a same-sex couple is raising the child?

Vasily Piskarev, who chairs the State Duma’s Security and Corruption Control Committee, explained on Monday that “the same-sex family” could strike anywhere that permits gender reassignment, “whether in documents or by medical intervention.” He noted that banning adoptions by citizens of countries that permit gender-affirming surgery will effectively prohibit the adoption of children in Russia by anyone in a NATO member state. “We must ensure that a child grows up and develops in a normal family where there’s a biological dad and a biological mom, so to speak,” said Piskarev.

Duma deputies are also working on a draft law that would affect families trying to return children deported from the regions of Ukraine that Russia invaded and annexed. The legislation would require genetic testing to prove biological ties before children are released from “special institutions in the new regions of the Russian Federation.”

The number of Russian orphans adopted by foreigners plummeted after 2012, with the introduction of the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, which banned adoptions by U.S. citizens following the tragic death in the U.S. of a Russian-born boy by the same name. From 2012 to 2019, adoptions by foreigners declined almost elevenfold, falling from 2,604 to just 240.