Orphans in Russia’s Yaroslavl region outside Moscow ride bicycles with their teacher. Photo: EPA / SERGEI CHIRIKOV
Russia’s lower house of parliament passed the first reading of a bill that would ban the adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries which allow gender transitioning, the State Duma website announced on Wednesday.
Lawmakers voted almost unanimously to back the proposed bill, with 397 deputies voting in favour and just one, the Communist Party’s Nikolay Vasilyev, voting against the measure.
Saying that the bill would help to uphold Russia’s “traditional values”, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who was also the lead author of the legislation, said the initiative had been “necessary to protect our children from the dangers they may face when they are adopted or fostered by citizens of foreign countries where gender reassignment is allowed.”
Volodin noted that the law would apply to citizens of countries where gender transition is possible, whether that be through gender reassignment surgery or through allowing individuals to change their gender on official documents.
As such, citizens of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Estonia and the UK would be barred from adopting Russian children if the bill becomes law.
The proposed legislation still needs to be passed in two more readings by the State Duma before being voted on by the upper house Federation Council and then going to the Kremlin to be signed into law by Vladimir Putin.
Last year the Russian government introduced a ban on people legally or medically changing their gender as part of the Kremlin’s widening crackdown on LGBTQ rights and its broader culture war battle against what it refers to as “woke Western values”.
