Under the 1990 Embryo Protection Act, surrogacy in Germany is punishable by three years in prison or a fine.

For many German couples, whether heterosexual or same-sex, surrogacy abroad has become an important option.

In February, Spahn’s party signed a resolution reaffirming its support for banning the practice within Germany itself, to stop the emergence of “commercial or neutral models that turn surrogacy into a business model.”

Spahn’s critics pointed out that when he was health minister in 2020, he rejected calls from the liberal FDP to relax the ban on surrogacy in Germany.

And in 2015, he wrote that “as a gay man and a Christian, I personally find the idea of ​​a rented womb very difficult to accept.”

Before Spahn’s resignation, Daniel Peters, a prominent CDU politician in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, told the Bild tabloid that Spahn’s position was “no longer tenable and he should resign.”

He said it was completely wrong for Spahn to have ignored German law and considered it right to act as a private individual in one way and vote another way for his party.

Other EU countries, including France, Spain and Italy, also ban surrogacy, which involves a woman carrying a baby and giving birth on behalf of parents who cannot have children.

France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, ruled this month that babies born to a surrogate mother abroad must be legally recognized as children of their intended parents.

Meanwhile, Italy banned Italians from having a baby abroad through surrogacy in 2024, in a policy promoted by the right-wing government of Giorgia Meloni.