THE HAGUE: A Dutch man suspected of fathering over 550 children across the globe through sperm donations has been ordered to stop further donations.
The man named Jonathan (41) could be fined more than €100,000 (£88,000) if he donates again. He was banned from donating to fertility clinics in Netherlands six year back (2017) after it emerged that he had fathered over 100 children. But instead of stopping, the Dutch man carried on donating sperm online and abroad.
A court in The Hague has told Jonathan to provide a list of all the clinics he had used and to order them to destroy his sperm forthwith. The man was said to have misled hundreds of women. As per the Dutch clinical guidelines, a donor should not father more than 25 children in twelve families.
But the judges said, the man helped produce between 550-600 children since he began donating sperm in 2007. He was taken to the court by a foundation protecting donor children’s rights and by the mother of one of the children allegedly fathered from his sperm.
“The point is that this kinship network with hundreds of half-brothers and half-sisters is much too large,” Gert-Mark Smelt, a spokesman for the court said.
According to the reports, over 100 of the children fathered by the Dutch man were born in the country’s clinics and others privately, but he also donated to a Danish clinic which dispatched his semen to addresses in various other countries.
The man is also not permitted to contact any prospective parents “with the wish that he was willing to donate semen… advertise his services to prospective parents or join any organisation that establishes contact between prospective parents”, said the judge.
The donor “deliberately misinformed” prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past, the district court in The Hague said.
“All these parents are now confronted with the fact that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network, with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose,” it said.
The court said it was “sufficiently plausible” that this has or could have negative psychosocial consequences for the children.
Sperm donors are asked to limit the number of times they offer their services, to reduce the chance that siblings might unknowingly form a couple and have children together. The country has been hit by fertility scandals in the past.
In 2019, a fertility doctor accused of using his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent was confirmed as the father of 49 children.
