Ecuador adoption law bars LGBTQ+ couples and adds custody risk for parents supporting trans children
People celebrates after the Ecuador’s Constitutional Court approved equal civil marriage, in Quito, on June 12, 2019 (Getty Images)
LGBTQ+ advocates and Human Rights Watch have condemned Ecuador’s new adoption reform for explicitly barring LGBTQ+ couples and requiring single adopters to be straight, while also creating a potential route to custody loss for families accused of “promoting” gender-affirming care for trans children.
The Reform Law of Various Legal Bodies for the Streamlining of Adoption took effect on 14 August after being approved by Ecuador’s National Assembly in a 118-0 vote. The law has been presented as an effort to streamline adoption and reduce the time children spend in foster care.
Under the legislation, only different-sex couples can adopt children. It also states that single people adopting must be straight. The law further says parents may be at risk of losing custody for “promoting” gender-affirming care for a trans child, wording critics have described as vague. The text of the adoption reform law sets out the changes.
Cristian González Cabrera, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a Human Rights Watch statement: “Improving the adoption system is a legitimate legislative goal, but it should not be used as a pretext to entrench discrimination and undermine children’s health,” adding: “By legislating on the basis of bias and misinformation rather than evidence, Ecuadorian lawmakers are endangering children and perpetuating stereotypes based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics,”
What the reform changes
The Ecuadorian LGBT Federation said expediting adoptions is “a legitimate and necessary objective” but that “making sexual orientation a barrier is not.”
“Being heterosexual does not demonstrate parental fitness,” the group said, adding that “being LGBT+ does not constitute parental incapacity either.”
It also warned about how a straight-only requirement for single adopters could be applied in practice: “If heterosexuality becomes a legal requirement for a single person to adopt, institutions will have to determine, in some way, whether that requirement is met.”
On the law’s provisions affecting trans children, the federation said supporting trans kids “does not make a family an enemy of childhood.”
LGBTQ+ rights in Ecuador
Ecuador legalised same-sex marriage nationwide in 2019 following a Constitutional Court ruling. The country’s 2008 Constitution includes broad equality and non-discrimination principles, and has been central to major rights litigation.
Across Latin America, adoption and parental recognition remain uneven even where marriage equality exists, with frequent political and legal disputes over LGBTQ+ parenting.
