A senior lawmaker from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) resigned on Saturday after a controversy erupted over his having a baby born through a surrogate mother.
Jens Spahn, the chairman of the CDU’s faction in the German parliament, became a father through a surrogate mother in the United States. The practice of surrogacy is banned in Germany.
In a letter written to party colleagues, Spahn said that his personal happiness of starting a family with his husband is “incompatible” with his political office.
“In recent days, I have come to realise that my personal happiness in starting a family with my husband and becoming a father is incompatible with my political office,” Jens Spahn wrote in the letter, news agency AFP reported.
The controversy erupted as Jens Spahn opted for surrogacy for the birth of his child, while his own party’s opposition stance is against the practice in general. CDU is vehemently opposed to surrogate pregnancies, having most recently voted to maintain Germany’s ban at a party congress in February.
The controversy
Jens Spahn and his husband, Daniel Funke, recently became parents to a child through a surrogate mother in the United States. That decision immediately attracted criticism from within the CDU after the news broke in the German press on Thursday, including calls for Spahn to resign, as well as charges of hypocrisy from other politicians.
Spahn had sought to defend himself in a podcast interview with the Bild newspaper on Friday. He said he “had “wrestled with myself for a long time, including on the issue of surrogacy”, before finally deciding to have a child that way.
46-year-old Spahn previously served as health minister during the Covid-19 pandemic under former chancellor Angela Merkel.
In recent years, he has become a prominent voice on the CDU’s right-wing flank, notably pushing for a more hardline stance on immigration.
How the German Chancellor reacted
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declined to weigh in publicly on Jens Spahn’s decision on Friday but said that the issue would be discussed by the party’s national executive committee.
The chancellor also said he saw “no reason” to change Germany’s laws on surrogate pregnancy or alter the CDU’s longstanding opposition.
