(Image: Unsplash)The controversy surrounding German politician Jens Spahn has been framed as a story about political hypocrisy. A senior Christian Democrat, whose party has long opposed surrogacy, has become a father through a surrogate in the United States. Surrogacy is increasingly presented as a compassionate solution to an understandable human longing. For nine months, a mother and her unborn child exist in a unique biological bond unlike any other in human life. To treat that relationship as something that can be contracted in advance and transferred at birth is not simply to alter legal procedure.