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, which entered into force on August 14, 2026, purports to remove inefficiencies in adoption processes and reduce the amount of time children spend in institutional care. But the law compounds an existing ban on adoption by same-sex couples by explicitly barring single lesbian, gay, and bisexual people from adopting. It also makes a parent's "promotion" of gender-affirming medical care for a transgender child grounds for the loss of their parental rights.
"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. "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."
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.
While marriage equality is legal in Ecuador, the Constitution already discriminates by providing that adoption is not available to same-sex couples. The new law broadens the reach of that discrimination by providing that single adopters must be heterosexual. Previously, the Children and Adolescents Code prioritized married heterosexual couples over single people but did not, in the provision governing adoption principles, expressly limit single adopters to heterosexual people.
Sexual orientation bears no relationship to a person's ability to provide a safe, stable, and loving home to a child. 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, Human Rights Watch said.
The discriminatory provisions targeting parents of transgender children are also 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, Human Rights Watch said.
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. Parents whose children undergo those surgeries should not be at risk of losing their parental rights either, but neither should those procedures be tacitly encouraged, Human Rights Watch said.
Those surgeries, usually performed in infancy or early childhood, thus 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. Human Rights Watch has urged governments to ban such surgical procedures when they carry a meaningful risk of harm and can be safely deferred.
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. The commitment followed controversy surrounding a Constitutional Court judgment requiring education authorities to protect LGBTI students from discrimination. Then-Education Minister Alegría Crespo publicly said the ministry would not implement measures based on "gender ideologies."
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 what it called an "oversight" process to analyze the effects of the ruling. This unfolded amid broader government attacks against judges and other government actions that threatened to undermine judicial independence.
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 in accordance with their evolving capacities. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also called on states to ensure equal access to comprehensive health services, including gender-affirming care, as well as informed consent with respect to intersex "normalizing" surgeries.
