A Dutch court on Friday banned a “mass donor”, the parent of at least 550 children, from donating his sperm to future parents, in a new scandal linked to fertility issues that shocks the Netherlands. The man, identified by local media as Jonathan M., 41, risks having to pay 100,000 euros each time he breaks the ban.
A mother and the Donorkind foundation (“Donor’s Child”) had initiated summary proceedings against him last month, noting that he continued to look for future parents on social networks. Identified only as ‘Eva’, the plaintiff mother said she was grateful to the court for preventing the man from ‘making mass donations, which have spread like wildfire to other countries’. “I ask the donor to respect our interests and accept the verdict,” she said, quoted in a statement.
A “restriction of physical freedom and contact”?
According to Donorkind, Eva found the man in 2018 via a dating platform, on which he promised to father a maximum of 25 children, in accordance with Dutch clinic guidelines to avoid inbreeding, incest and psychological problems in children. of donors. The man had actually fathered 100 children in Dutch clinics alone at the time, plus an unknown number privately and via a Danish clinic which sent his semen to private addresses in various countries. “Such a restriction of physical and contact freedom, as stated by the court, does not seem to me to have any place in a free society like the Netherlands,” he wrote to the channel.
The Hague tribunal found it ‘sufficiently plausible’ that expanding the huge kinship network would have negative psychosocial consequences for the children, citing psychological issues around identity and fears of incest . Nevertheless, Jonathan M. can still donate to parents who already have a child by him and want another, according to local media.