According to the court, according to Dutch guidelines, sperm donors may produce a maximum of 25 children with 12 mothers.
A Dutch court has banned a man from donating his sperm after he fathered at least 550 children in the Netherlands and other countries and misled expectant parents about the number of offspring he helped father.
A judge in The Hague court on Friday ordered the halt in a court order issued Friday by the mother of a child conceived with the donor’s sperm and a foundation representing other parents.
The mother, identified only as Eva by the foundation, welcomed the court’s decision.
“I hope this ruling leads to a ban on massive donations and spreads like an oil slick to other countries. We must stand hand in hand around our children and protect them from this injustice,” Eva said in a statement.
The court found, according to Dutch guidelines, that sperm donors are allowed to produce a maximum of 25 children with 12 mothers, and the donor lied to prospective parents about his donation history.
The donor, identified as Jonathan M under Dutch privacy guidelines, supplied sperm to several Dutch fertility clinics and to a clinic in Denmark, as well as many other people he came into contact with through advertisements and online forums, the court said.
The donor’s lawyer said during a court hearing that he wanted to help parents who otherwise would not be able to conceive.
‘Negative psychosocial consequences’
The judge hearing the civil case said the donor “deliberately lied about this in order to persuade the parents to accept him as a donor”.
“All of these parents are now faced 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,” the court said. consequences for the children”.
The case was about “conflicting fundamental rights. On the one hand, the right to respect the privacy of the parents and the donor children … and on the other, the same right of the donor,” it sounds.
The court ruled that “the interests of the donor children and their parents outweigh the donor’s interest in continuing to donate sperm to new prospective parents”.
Jonathan M was ordered to stop all sperm donations immediately and to pay 100,000 euros per case if he violated the ban.
Lawyer Mark de Hek called the ruling “a clear signal and, as far as I’m concerned, a final warning to other mass donors”.
The case is the latest in a series of fertility scandals in the Netherlands.
In 2020, a deceased gynecologist was accused of fathering at least 17 children with women who believed they were receiving sperm from anonymous donors.
A year earlier, it turned out that a Rotterdam doctor fathered at least 49 children while inseminating women seeking treatment.