Surrogate children have no right to German passport, court rules

The court in Berlin ruled that the German embassy in India was within its rights to refuse a passport to the child, born in December, on the grounds that the citizenship of the biological father was irrelevant to the case.

Surrogate motherhood is prohibited in Germany. It is permitted in India. But under both German and Indian law, the legal father of a child born by surrogacy is actually the surrogate mother’s husband.

The biological father in this case was a German man born in 1950. He and his wife applied at the German embassy in India for the child to get a German passport.

The embassy rejected the application because it doubted the child’s German citizenship. The birth certificate from the hospital recorded the German man and his wife as the parents. The place of birth was recorded as an agency that specializes in surrogacy.

German citizenship is normally recorded if one of the parents has it. But the court ruled that doubts about this relationship were grounds for refusing a passport. In this case, the citizenship of the...