Usually what brings down a politician is less the original action, more the hypocrisy or cover-up. In the case of Jens Spahn, until recently one of Germany’s most important conservative members of parliament, it was not a failure to be open. He admitted what he had done and was proud of it, to the point of tears. The problem was that he seemed to forget that it contradicted the moral mores that he and his party advocated.
The crime? Paying a woman in the United States to bear a child on behalf of him and his same-sex partner. In Germany, such a transaction is against the law—as it is in a host of European states, including France, Italy, and the United Kingdom.
The ban leads couples, heterosexual and same-sex, to turn to brokers in other countries or sometimes directly to individuals. This is entirely legal, and many people do it. The problem in Spahn’s case is that he was the leader of the parliamentary party of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which only months ago reaffirmed its ban on domestic commercial surrogacy. He was in the room and nodded it through, even though he knew at the time that a woman was carrying his future child. And he repeatedly advocated for the ban.
