The powerful politician was no stranger to controversy, but brazenly defying a ban on surrogacy that he had long defended, was the last straw

Up until last week, Jens Spahn was, by all accounts, a model of political success in Germany. At just 22, he was elected to the Bundestag for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), and rose steadily through the ranks of the party. He was a leading official in the finance ministry, led the ministry of health through Covid and, in 2025, became his party’s leader in parliament, arguably the second-most powerful post in the country. Controversies – and there were many in more than two decades in politics – did not seem to stymie his rise to power.

So when Spahn was made to resign after announcing that he had become a father after he and his husband used a surrogate mother in the US, there was a moment of disbelief among those who thought him a Teflon political operator immune to scandal. Why was surrogacy the issue that finally brought him down? That this was the final straw for his party revealed how, in the conservative Germany of today, reproductive politics can mark a red line.

Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin

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