German Politician Resigns After Using Surrogacy He Opposed

Jens Spahn, one of Germany's most powerful politicians, resigned from his leadership role on Saturday after a major controversy. He and his husband announced they had become fathers with the help of a surrogate mother in the United States. The problem was that Spahn had long argued that surrogacy should stay illegal in Germany. Many people felt he was not practicing what he preached.

Spahn had been the leader of the CDU's group in Germany's parliament. The CDU, or Christian Democratic Union, is a large center-right political party. It is strongly against allowing surrogacy in Germany, and just months before the news broke, the party passed a resolution reaffirming that position. Spahn was at that very meeting, even though a surrogate mother in the US was already pregnant with his child at the time.

Surrogacy is when a woman carries and gives birth to a baby for another person or couple. She is usually paid for doing so. In Germany, this practice is banned. Doctors and agents who help arrange surrogacy in Germany can face legal trouble. However, it is not illegal in Germany for parents to raise a child who was born to a surrogate mother in another country, so Spahn and his husband do not face any criminal charges.

When the news came out, Spahn spoke happily about becoming a father. "It's hard to put this feeling into words," he told the German newspaper BILD. "My husband has become a dad, and so have I. Georg is our whole world." But many of his fellow politicians were not celebrating with him. They felt his personal choice went against the rules he had voted to keep in place.

Spahn had spoken out against surrogacy many times over the years. Back in 2015, he told a magazine that he personally found the idea of a surrogate birth very difficult to accept. In 2020, when another party tried to start a debate about changing Germany's surrogacy laws, Spahn pushed back. He argued that surrogacy could cause problems for a child's sense of identity — meaning how a child understands where they come from. Now, critics say his actions show a double standard, where a person holds others to rules they do not follow themselves.

Some members of his own party called for him to step down. Daniel Peters, the CDU leader in one German state, said Spahn had "deliberately flouted," or openly broken, the spirit of the law in Germany. Hubert Hüppe, the head of the CDU's seniors' group, said he was shocked. "It's not right for politicians to use their power and money to circumvent that ban," he said. Politicians from other parties also joined in the criticism. A spokesperson for the Left Party said that "political standards should apply to private life as well."

Facing so much pressure, Spahn announced his resignation. In a letter to his colleagues, he wrote that his personal happiness as a new father was "incompatible," or unable to exist side by side, with his role as a party leader. This was not Spahn's first major controversy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he was in charge of buying face masks for Germany, and the government ended up paying far too much for them. That scandal led to long legal battles worth billions of dollars. Even so, Spahn had managed to stay influential in German politics — until now.