Jens Spahn’s baby divides Germany

In a country with a low birth rate such as Germany, the birth of a baby is always welcomed. And the CDU leader, 46-year-old Jens Spahn, has also received a great many congratulations on the arrival of his first child, a baby boy. Alongside the congratulations – not least those from Chancellor Friedrich Merz – there has also been a barrage of criticism: because Spahn and his husband Daniel Funke became parents through surrogacy, a practice that German law has expressly prohibited since 1991. It was Helmut Kohl’s CDU that banned surrogacy on German soil back then, and the Christian Democratic Union has never changed its stance since.

The CDU’s most recent party conference also reiterated its opposition to the practice, emphasising that women must be protected from potential exploitation. Nor is the opposition unconditionally in favour of surrogacy, but what has sent many Germans into a frenzy is the fact that the high-profile couple – he, a former ‘enfant prodige’ of the moderate wing who has also served as Federal Minister of Health and has been mentioned on several occasions in the past as a possible chancellor of a ‘young Germany’, whilst the other is editor-in-chief of a well-known magazine – has resorted to the services of a woman in the United States, where surrogacy, although expensive, is perfectly legal. No one in Germany has questioned the Funke-Spahn couple’s desire for parenthood, but what is causing annoyance is the idea that the very people promoting a law are the first to circumvent it by using their wealth. In short, the rules apply neither to the rich nor to those who make them. That is why some in Germany, amidst the good wishes, have remarked that this was a ‘Marie Antoinette’-style pregnancy, far removed from the people with their brioches.