Ecuador Passes Law Banning Adoption for LGBT People and Threatening Parents of Trans Children
Ecuador’s National Assembly has unanimously passed a new adoption law that explicitly prohibits LGBT couples and single homosexual individuals from adopting children. The document, titled the “Reform Law of Various Legal Bodies for the Streamlining of Adoption,” went into effect on August 14, 2026, after receiving 118 votes in favor.
Under the new legislation, only different-sex couples are eligible to adopt, and single adopters are required to be heterosexual. Furthermore, the law establishes that parents may be deprived of parental rights for “promoting” gender-affirming medical, surgical, or pharmacological care for transgender children, with an exception for the treatment of intersex variations.
Human rights organizations have strongly criticized the reform. As reported by PinkNews , Cristian González Cabrera, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated that improving the adoption system should not be used as a pretext to entrench discrimination and undermine children’s health. The Ecuadorian LGBT Federation also noted that heterosexuality does not demonstrate parental fitness, nor does being LGBT constitute parental incapacity.
Although same-sex marriage was legalized in Ecuador in 2019, the country’s 2008 Constitution still restricts joint adoption rights strictly to different-sex couples. Human rights defenders point out that the new law worsens this situation by directly extending the ban to single applicants for the first time based on their sexual orientation.
