In a historic moment, Taiwan will now allow married same-sex couples to jointly adopt non-biological children.
In 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
However, the law only allowed same-sex couples to adopt children who are biologically related to one parent.
This meant that if a same-sex couple wanted to adopt a non-biological child, only one partner could be the child’s legal parent.
In January 2022, a same-sex couple in the southern city of Kaohsiung had won a lawsuit to jointly adopt a child.
However, the court dismissed other similar cases, according to CNN.
On Tuesday May 16, Taiwan’s parliament passed an amendment that allows same-sex couples to jointly adopt children, further moving the country towards achieving full marriage equality.
“We have finally returned the children of same-sex couples to their parents on paper,” Fan Yun, a member of parliament who had pushed for the amendment, wrote on Facebook. “Parental love is the same, and it is only through joint adoption that we can protect the rights and interests of each other by law.”
Earlier in the year, the country also began allowing Taiwanese people to marry a same-sex partner from another country, even if that country does not recognize same-sex marriage.
