Ecuador Adoption Law Targets LGBT Parents

A new adoption law in Ecuador contains discriminatory provisions targeting lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and threatens to strip many parents of transgender children of their parental rights, Human Rights Watch said today. The Reform Law of Various Legal Bodies for the Streamlining of Adoption entered into force on August 14, 2026.

While the law purports to remove inefficiencies in adoption processes, it compounds an existing constitutional ban on adoption by same-sex couples. It now explicitly bars single lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from adopting. The law also makes a parent’s “promotion” of gender-affirming medical care for a transgender child grounds for the loss of their parental rights.

Discriminatory Provisions and Legislative Process

Ecuador’s National Assembly approved the legislation on July 28 by a vote of 118-0, with 25 abstentions. President Daniel Noboa communicated his assent to the legislature on August 13.

“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,” said Cristian González Cabrera, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. The organization argues that legislating on bias and misinformation endangers children and perpetuates stereotypes.

Sexual orientation bears no relationship to a person’s ability to provide a safe, stable, and loving home to a child, according to Human Rights Watch. Any blanket exclusion based on sexual orientation, replacing individualized assessments of prospective parents, is contrary to the new law’s own stated commitment to the best interests of the child and violates international human rights law.

Threats to Parents of Transgender Children

The provisions targeting parents of transgender children are sweeping. The law describes parental support for medical, surgical, or pharmaceutical procedures intended to “modify the biological sex” of a child as conduct that can justify stripping parents of their legal relationship with their children.

If both parents lose parental authority and no eligible relatives can assume care, the law provides a pathway for the child to be declared eligible for adoption. Its formulation could encompass a wide range of health care and could deter families from seeking medical advice or supporting their trans children out of fear of state intervention.

The law clarifies that these provisions do not apply to parents who decide on “normalizing” medical intervention on behalf of children born with diverse sex characteristics. Human Rights Watch states that parents whose children undergo those surgeries should not be at risk of losing their parental rights, but neither should those procedures be tacitly encouraged.

Those surgeries, usually performed in infancy or early childhood without the child’s consent, are often medically unnecessary and carry risks of scarring, loss of sensation, lifelong sexual dysfunction, urinary incontinence, psychological trauma, and permanent sterilization.

Broader Context of Rights Erosion

The new law comes amid broader attacks on transgender children’s rights in Ecuador. In March 2025, President Daniel Noboa signed a public commitment stating that his government would not include what it called “gender ideology” in educational materials or permit “sex changes” for children.

In March and April 2026, Ecuador’s Constitutional Court affirmed the rights of transgender adolescents, holding that officials cannot automatically deny people under 18 the ability to modify the gender marker on identity documents solely because of their age. In response to the first ruling, a commission of Ecuador’s National Assembly began an “oversight” process to analyze the effects of the ruling.

International and Inter-American human rights standards prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics, including with respect to parental rights. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held that states must provide procedures for legal gender recognition that respect a person’s self-defined gender identity, including for children and adolescents.