Jens Spahn's surrogacy baby sparks German debate as CDU sticks to ban

A personal joy, a political storm

CDU parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn and his husband Daniel Funke announced on 15 July that they had become parents to a son, Georg, born via a surrogate in the United States. "My husband has become a dad, and I with him. Georg is our entire happiness. This feeling can hardly be put into words," Spahn told Bild. The couple, married since 2017, had spoken openly about their wish for children. Funke posted a photo on Instagram with the caption "We Are Family". The surrogate mother, the pair said in a message to friends, "now belongs to the family and will accompany Georg's life path".

My husband has become a dad, and I with him. Georg is our entire happiness. This feeling can hardly be put into words.

Germany's legal ban

Surrogacy is illegal in Germany. The 1991 Embryonenschutzgesetz prohibits doctors from performing artificial insemination on a woman who intends to give the child away after birth. Egg donation is also banned, and surrogacy contracts are void as contrary to public policy. The birth mother is always the legal mother under German law. However, it is not a crime for intended parents to bring a child born via surrogacy abroad back to Germany. Many Germans travel to the US, Canada, Ukraine, Russia or Georgia for surrogacy, with total costs per child ranging from 100,000 to 250,000 US dollars, according to tagesschau.de.

People are not goods. Neither a woman as a birthing machine nor a child produced for money should be purchasable.

Ethical concerns and criticism

Feminist Alice Schwarzer sharply criticised Spahn. "Jens Spahn has now placed his personal interests above the law. He thereby contributes to the acceptance of a practice in which women carry foreign children for money and are at the same time fully at the mercy of the buyers' demands," she told the Catholic News Agency KNA. She called surrogacy "inhuman and unchristian" and said the UN considers it "human trafficking" and "slavery". Medical ethicist Giovanni Maio of the University of Freiburg warned that surrogacy tends to reduce the mother "to her carrying function, to make her an object". He also questioned the child's welfare: "Can it be in the child's interest to come into being and grow up under such conditions?" The programmed break in the bond between surrogate and child, he said, "appears to be something traumatising".

The tendency to reduce the mother to her carrying function, to make her an object.

Party line and past positions

The CDU has long opposed surrogacy. At its party congress in Stuttgart in February 2026, delegates reaffirmed the ban, even for altruistic models, to "prevent abuse, exploitation and health risks". Chancellery minister Thorsten Frei said in April that surrogacy "contradicts the protection of unborn life and the preservation of human dignity" and that he rejected any liberalisation. Spahn's own health ministry had argued in 2020 that surrogacy could cause "special difficulties in the child's self-discovery" and negative developmental effects. A party spokesperson told dpa after the birth announcement: "The CDU Germany has a clear party conference resolution. The current legal situation in Germany should remain as it is from the party's point of view."

Surrogacy contradicts these principles, as it instrumentalises the embryo and the pregnancy. I therefore reject a liberalisation in Germany.

What happens next

A government commission in March 2023 concluded that legalising egg donation would be constitutionally possible, but recommended keeping commercial surrogacy banned. Altruistic surrogacy could be permitted in exceptional cases, such as close relationships between intended parents and the surrogate. No legislative change followed, and the Federal Family Ministry said on 16 July that the coalition agreement does not foresee any amendment. The debate, however, has been rekindled by one of the country's most prominent conservative politicians becoming a father through a practice his party condemns.