Jens Spahn, a senior figure in Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU-led coalition government and parliamentary group leader for the CDU/CSU bloc (Germany's dominant centre-right alliance), resigned at the weekend after it emerged he and his husband had used a surrogate mother in the United States to have a child — a practice that is criminalised under German law and that Spahn himself had actively opposed. Spahn, 46, a staunch conservative who as health minister in 2020 refused to discuss loosening Germany's 1990 ban on surrogacy, wrote in his resignation letter that his "personal happiness" in starting a family had proven incompatible with his political role. The scandal has triggered a broader public debate about surrogacy legislation in Germany and added pressure on Merz, who is already facing record-low approval ratings and the prospect of the far-right AfD making significant electoral gains in two regional elections in September.