Russian lawmakers are putting the final touches on a bill that would block adoptions to countries that allow gender-reassignment procedures, State Duma deputy Vasily Piskarev revealed on Monday.
Piskarev, who chairs the Duma’s Committee on Security and Countering Corruption, previewed the ban last November, noting that it mainly affected NATO member states. Foster children need to grow up “in a normal family where there’s a father and a mother,” he said at the time.
“The document is at the final stages of revision,” Piskarev said during a parliamentary committee meeting on Monday. All the relevant ministries and agencies have already given their input, he added.
The initiative seeks to prohibit the adoption of Russian children into any country that allows gender changes “in any format,” whether through surgery or application of chemical puberty blockers.
The US and many of its allies have embraced such procedures in recent years, calling them “gender-affirming.” Numerous public officials across the West pledged their allegiance to the LGBT cause last week, on the “International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia & Transphobia” (IDAHOBIT).
Russia banned same-sex couples from adopting children in 2013 and imposed severe restrictions on sex changes last year. The Russian Orthodox Church has since proposed to ban international adoptions into countries that allow “gender reassignment” procedures, which was then picked up by the lawmakers.
Nationals of several countries are already prohibited from adopting Russian children. The 2013 ‘Dima Yakovlev Law’ banned adoptions by Americans, after a Russian orphan adopted by a Virginia couple was left in a car for nine hours and died of heat stroke.
In August 2022, there was a proposal in the State Duma to expand the adoption ban to all “unfriendly countries.” Sending Russian children there would be a “blow to the future of the nation,” they argued, since the West “destroys traditional values.” President Vladimir Putin objected, however, saying that the way it was drafted, the bill would infringe on the rights of Ukrainians living in the territory of Russia.