Germany's former health minister resigns over surrogate-born child

The parliamentary leader of Germany's governing party, Jens Spahn, has resigned after it emerged that he had a child via surrogacy in the USA.

Surrogacy is illegal within Germany, but Spahn has not broken German law because participating in surrogacy abroad is not criminalised. However, he was accused of hypocrisy by critics including members of his own party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), which opposes surrogacy.

Announcing his resignation, Spahn said in a statement: 'I have realised that my personal happiness – founding a family together with my husband and becoming a father – is not compatible with my political office'.

Spahn is not the first member of the Bundestag (the federal parliament of Germany) to become a parent through surrogacy, but his political stance on the issue means that the revelation has affected his political credibility.

Spahn had previously spoken against surrogacy, stating in 2015 that 'as a gay man and a Christian, I find it personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb'. As health minister in 2020, he rejected calls to relax Germany's ban on surrogacy. Most recently, while his surrogate was pregnant, he said nothing when his party voted to uphold the current law in February 2026.

Calls for Spahn to step down have come from within the CDU and from other parties. 'Anyone who advocates for rules politically should be able to explain clearly why those rules apparently do not apply to them personally,' said Bundestag member Janosch Dahmen of the Green party.

Responding to the controversy, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the case 'on a human level, legally, socially and ethically... moves a lot of people in Germany at the moment'.

Germany is not the only country in the European Union to criminalise surrogacy, but its laws on assisted conception are restrictive more generally (see BioNews 1171). Under Germany's Embryo Protection Act 1990, clinicians face up to three years' imprisonment for inseminating, or transferring an embryo to the womb of, a woman acting as a surrogate (see BioNews 1011). Egg donation and the creation of embryos for the purpose of donation are also illegal in Germany, despite sperm donation being permitted.

The country legalised civil partnerships for same-sex couples in 2001 and same-sex marriage in 2017, but its laws on assisted conception have not been updated since that time. Gay men are therefore left without a legal route to have genetically-related children within Germany.