Lamenting the good old times: surrogacy in Germany

Germany's high court affirmed that a child born by a surrogate mother in a foreign country is the child of the German parents who arranged the surrogacy agreement and adopted the baby after birth.

Big deal?

It is because surrogacy is illegal in Germany.

In the case, the high court accepted that the process is legal in California, where a German couple had the arranged the surrogacy. Hence, being parents in California meant they were parents in Germany, too.

Why not, if other legal considerations of what makes a family are recognized? For example, marry someone in California, or - Lord - Las Vegas, and go to Germany, you continue to be married.

Personally, the blogster has reservations about surrogacy: there are enough perfectly good orphans, for example. And if you have ever had a glimpse into an American orphanage and seen the children, especially the small girls, work incredibly hard for that one day of picture taking for the "hard to place" book, you might agree. There are other issues, as recently seen in the case of a handicapped child row involving an Australian couple and a Thai surrogate mother.

But this is not about that. It is about how conservative Germans lament the end of traditional motherhood.

Didn't German law institute the surrogacy ban for a good reason, asks this opEd piece in FAZ. The development of the child in the womb of the mother and its effect for the future well being of the child was the reason for the ban in Germany. The court should enforce German laws, laws that were made by a democratic sovereign, says the writer.

Shouldn't logic say that adoption should be banned, too, if this is your justification?

The mythical concept of motherhood humans have invented, yes, invented, is just that: a myth.

So, we need to burst a bubble: German family law, well, West German family law, was a stronghold of reformed Nazis, and caution about the latest pregnancy tech are still being exploited in the name of the myth of motherhood.

The other beef of conservative commentators on this phenomenon: if you can simply go abroad to circumvent German laws, where will that end?

We don't have an answer on that, but as to surrogates, you need to be well off to do this, so the pattern fits seamlessly into world in which wealth has had its privileges for a long time.