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

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

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

Critics of Spahn had pointed out that, when he was health minister in 2020, he rejected calls by the liberal FDP for a relaxation on the ban on surrogacy in Germany.

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

Prior to Spahn’s resignation, Daniel Peters, a leading CDU politician in the northern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, told tabloid newspaper Bild that Spahn’s position was “no longer tenable and he must resign”.

He said it was completely wrong that Spahn had disregarded German law and had considered it right to act one way as a private individual and vote another 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 unable to have children themselves.

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

Meanwhile, Italy made it illegal in 2024 for Italians to have a baby abroad through surrogacy, in a policy driven by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government.