Jens Spahn, one of the most senior figures in Germany's conservative bloc, is facing growing pressure to step aside after confirming that he and his husband welcomed a child through a surrogate arrangement in the United States, a practice his own party has spent years campaigning to keep illegal at home. Spahn leads the joint parliamentary group of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) inside Germany's parliament, a position that makes him one of the most recognisable conservative voices in the country, and it is precisely that standing which is now drawing scrutiny.
Spahn announced on Wednesday that he and his husband, Daniel Funke, had become fathers to a son named Georg. Speaking to the tabloid Bild, Spahn said, "Georg is our greatest joy," and added separately that the emotion was almost too big to put into words. Funke shared a photograph on Instagram showing the pair together, with Spahn pushing a pram, captioned "We Are Family."
Skirting a Law He Once Defended
Germany's 1990 Embryo Protection Act treats surrogacy as a criminal offence, punishable with up to three years in prison or a fine. That is why couples who want to have children through a surrogate, whether they are gay or straight, routinely travel abroad, and the United States, with its established legal framework and surrogacy agencies, has become one of the most common destinations for German parents in that position. Spahn and Funke followed that same well-worn path rather than a novel one. Notably, while the 1990 law bans the practice on German soil, there is no separate rule stopping parents from bringing home a child who was born to a surrogate mother overseas, which is how Spahn is able to raise Georg in Germany without personally breaking German law.
A Ban That Divides Europe
Surrogacy involves a woman carrying and delivering a baby on behalf of people who are unable to have children of their own, and Germany is far from alone in outlawing it. France, Spain and Italy all keep similar prohibitions written into their own laws. The legal picture has been shifting fast elsewhere on the continent too. Earlier this month, France's top court, the Court of Cassation, ruled that children born abroad to a surrogate mother should be legally recognised as the children of the parents who intended to raise them, effectively softening the practical consequences of France's own domestic ban. Italy has moved in the opposite direction: in 2024 it made it a criminal offence for Italian citizens to pursue surrogacy abroad at all, a policy pushed through by Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government and aimed squarely at closing the kind of loophole German parents currently rely on.
Spahn's Own Past Statements Now Work Against Him
The timing of Spahn's announcement has made the controversy sharper rather than milder. In February, Spahn's own CDU held a party conference that reaffirmed its support for keeping the domestic ban firmly in place, with delegates saying they wanted to prevent the growth of what they described as commercial or neutral models that turn surrogacy into a business model. Critics have also dug back into Spahn's own record as health minister: in 2020 he turned down a push from the liberal FDP to relax Germany's surrogacy rules, a decision he defended at the time on principle. Further back, in 2015, Spahn wrote that "as a gay man and a Christian I find it personally very hard to warm to the idea of a rented womb," a line now being read back to him repeatedly by opponents as evidence of a personal as well as political reversal. He is also not the only senior CDU figure in this position: earlier this year it emerged that party colleague Hendrik Streeck had likewise become a father with the help of a surrogate mother in the United States, which critics say shows the gap between the party's public rules and some of its leading members' private choices is not an isolated case.
Rival Parties React With Mixed Sympathy
Reactions among Spahn's political rivals have been mixed rather than uniformly hostile. Greens leader Felix Banaszak said he personally wished Spahn and his husband well, though he argued Spahn should still come forward and address the situation publicly, since the ethical questions surrounding surrogacy were "not trivial." Health spokesman Janosch Dahmen went further, framing the controversy as a matter of political consistency rather than the birth of the child itself, saying that "anyone who advocates for rules politically should be able to explain clearly why those rules apparently do not apply to them personally." From the liberal FDP, Henning Höne said he could not respect politicians who pass laws at home only to "evade them internationally with money and contacts."
The Harshest Words Come From Inside His Own Party
The most damaging criticism, though, has come from inside Spahn's own political family rather than from his opponents. Marion Rosin, a CDU figure in the state of Thuringia and part of the party's Women's Union, argued that politicians who set standards for others must be measured by those same standards, warning that "if that credibility is gone, resignation is a matter of consequence." Daniel Peters, a senior CDU figure in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, told Bild that Spahn's position was "no longer tenable and he must resign." Peters argued it was simply wrong for Spahn to have sidestepped German law in his own private life while continuing to vote a different way on behalf of his party, effectively treating the ban as optional for himself but binding for everyone else. Klaus Holetschek, a leading figure in the CSU, the CDU's sister party in Bavaria, struck a more measured tone, telling a news agency that he respected the couple's private decision and congratulated them on becoming parents. Even so, he made clear the party's official position had not moved an inch, saying "what is banned in Germany remains banned, and we won't waver on that."
With criticism now arriving from allies as much as from opponents, Spahn faces a test of whether he can keep separating his personal choices from the policy positions he continues to defend in public, and whether colleagues inside his own CDU and CSU will accept that distinction or keep pushing, as Peters already has, for him to step down altogether.
