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A senior German politician has resigned after admitting that he and his husband became parents through surrogacy in the United States, despite having spent years defending Germany’s ban on the practice.
Jens Spahn, parliamentary leader of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a former health minister, stepped down following days of intense criticism over what many colleagues described as a clear contradiction between his public position and his private actions.
In his resignation letter, Spahn said: “Over the past few days, I have come to realise that my personal happiness, starting a family with my husband and becoming a father, is incompatible with my political office.”
“The gap between my private decision to have a child through surrogacy and the understandable expectations placed on me as chair of our parliamentary group has become greater than I anticipated,” he added.
Surrogacy has been illegal in Germany since 1990 under the Embryo Protection Act, with those arranging surrogacy facing fines or up to three years’ imprisonment. Although German couples can travel overseas to commission surrogate pregnancies in countries where the practice is legal, the CDU has consistently defended Germany’s prohibition, most recently reaffirming its opposition earlier this year.
Spahn himself had previously supported the ban. In 2015, he wrote that, “as a gay man and a Christian”, he found it “personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb”. As health minister, he also rejected calls to relax Germany’s surrogacy laws.
His decision to commission a surrogate pregnancy abroad therefore prompted accusations of hypocrisy from across the political spectrum and within his own party.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz described Spahn’s resignation as “right and inevitable”, adding: “Credibility is the most valuable asset in politics.”
Daniel Peters, a CDU regional leader, said Spahn’s position had become untenable because he had voted to uphold Germany’s surrogacy ban while privately acting in direct contradiction to it.
Hubert Hüppe, another senior CDU politician, said the controversy should not simply be viewed through the lens of adults wanting children.
“Of course, I can understand that everyone desires a child, including homosexual couples,” he said. “The key debate is whether women are being instrumentalised.”
Speaking on the matter, SPUC’s Executive Director, Michael Robinson, said: “The surrogacy debate always ignores the gravest part of the industry. This affair does the same. We talk of Jens Spahn, and we talk of the woman who has been used as an incubator, but we do not talk about the baby whose brothers and sisters will be frozen in perpetuity or destroyed, or who will be raised without the love of a mother. Spahn has turned both women and children into the subjects of contractual arrangements. Babies are commissioned, pregnancies are purchased, and women are expected to carry children for others before surrendering them at birth.
“Spahn’s resignation should be welcomed, and SPUC are glad to see the CDU unwilling to change their position on surrogacy. Though the Germans are doing it better than us, Europe must follow the likes of Italy and criminalise surrogacy both on their soil and criminalise their citizens who seek it abroad.”
