It has been just under a month since the surrogacy scandal involving Jens Spahn (the man on the right in the image), once the powerful parliamentary group leader of the CDU/CSU, plunged the German Federal Government into a crisis from which it seems unable to extricate itself. But the scandal does have its good side – suddenly there is a debate about surrogacy in Germany.
Spahn, an openly gay politician who had always endeavoured to demonstrate through his own example that a ‘conservative’ worldview and openly practised homosexual debauchery fit well together, was forced to resign when it transpired that – in stark contrast to the party line he himself had publicly advocated to oppose any attempt to repeal the ban on surrogacy in Germany (which, of course, the Greens and Socialists are calling for to be relaxed). – he had commissioned a commercial surrogate mother, together with his gay partner, to bear a child,
His partner is the child’s genetic father, but Spahn is now also a ‘father’ – or at least he calls himself so.
Although Spahn’s resignation was not demanded by Chancellor Merz, it was called for by the party rank and file, who are no longer willing to tolerate party figures openly leading a lifestyle that is quite clearly incompatible with the Christian view of humanity which the party claims as its own. The resignation forced Merz to carry out a major government reshuffle, the botched execution of which became the talk of the summer. Now autumn is approaching and with it a series of state elections which – partly due to the surrogacy scandal – could turn into a disaster for the Chancellor’s party. It could be the beginning of the end.
The issue of surrogacy has now attracted a certain amount of attention. It is a topic on which even radical feminists are coming round to the viewpoint of Christian-Western ethics, because they reject the commercialisation of the female body. But of course, it is not only women who are commercialised in this context, but human beings as such – the child becomes a commodity. Surrogacy is not a ‘self-determined’ form of parenthood (as, for example, the nternational Planned Parenthood Federation and politicians aligned with it would have us believe), but rather a modern form of slave trade.
It is slowly dawning on the otherwise somewhat slow-on-the-up-and-up Christian Democrats that this form of human trafficking is condemned by a vast majority of the population, and that even decades of systematic deconstruction of Christian values have done nothing to change this. At the same time, they recognise that the current ban on surrogacy in Germany and other European countries remains completely ineffective if it can be circumvented quite simply (as Spahn has demonstrated) by quickly travelling abroad to make use of the services of a commercial surrogate mother. “I haven’t done anything illegal,” he said. And: “Pure doctrine is one thing; real life is quite another.”
The truth of the matter is this: in real life, a ban on surrogacy that does not also apply to those who use surrogacy services abroad is, in practice, ineffective. (All other things being equal, this naturally applies to abortion as well, as demonstrated by the ECI’s appalling campaign in favour of Europe-wide, EU-funded abortion tourism.)
Italy has led the way by prohibiting the use of surrogacy with extraterritorial effect. Any Italian national or person with their main residence in Italy is liable to criminal prosecution if they have a child carried to term by a surrogate mother abroad. This is the only effective way to combat this odious form of human trafficking and exploitative treatment of women.
The “understandable desire to have a child of one’s own” does not justify resorting to surrogacy, said Susanne Hierl (CSU), legal affairs spokesperson for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, speaking to the Catholic weekly newspaper Die Tagespost from Würzburg. Existing bans must be enforced more rigorously and further regulations examined.
It is, of course, foreseeable that the EU bureaucracy, which classifies abortions as a ‘health service’, will, given this precedent, be hardly in a position to classify surrogacy contracts any differently.
One can well imagine that, before long, ‘human rights experts’ and EU lawyers will declare, with concerned expressions, that whilst an EU Member State may be able to ban human trafficking on its own territory, it must not prevent anyone from travelling abroad for that purpose, or from advertising surrogacy across borders. You know, of course … the free movement of persons, one of the four ‘fundamental freedoms of the EU’ (and thus of higher rank than all the constitutional principles of all Member States), which is used by both the abortion industry and the LGBT lobby as an effective tool for deconstructing even the most basic moral standards.
Who knows, perhaps we will soon see – following the example of ‘My Voice, My Choice’ – a ‘citizens’ initiative’ jointly funded by the European Commission and certain American billionaire philanthropists, calling for the European Social Fund to finance surrogacy. Or perhaps two or three female EU Commissioners will take the initiative to go before the press to announce that the Social Fund can already be used for such purposes, because surrogacy is, after all, a … you know … ‘health service’. And finally, poor and needy married couples (or LGBT couples and single people) should not only have the ‘right’ to buy a child abroad, but also the necessary funds.
Perhaps it is time once again to stand together at European level in the fight for human dignity. A European Citizens’ Initiative against surrogacy would probably find many influential supporters, at least in Italy and Germany. And even Ursula von der Leyen, if the initiative were backed by her own party, would probably find it very difficult – should it be successful – to treat such an initiative in the same cheeky and condescending manner as the Barroso Commission did with ‘ONE OF US’.
one-of-us.org 