Dutch court bans sperm donor who fathered 550 children

A judge at The Hague District Court ordered an injunction brought by the mother of a child conceived with sperm from a donor and a foundation representing other parents to stay

The Hague: A Dutch court on Friday banned a man from donating his sperm after he fathered at least 550 children in the Netherlands and other countries and misled future parents about the number of offspring he helped conceive. A judge at The Hague District Court ordered an injunction brought by the mother of a child conceived with sperm from a donor and a foundation representing other parents to stay.

The mother, identified by the foundation as Eva, welcomed the court’s decision. “I hope this ruling will stop large-scale donations and spread like an oil slick to other countries. We must stand hand in hand with our children to protect them from this injustice,” she said in a statement explain. The court noted that under Dutch guidelines, a sperm donor can have up to 25 children from 12 mothers and that the donor concealed his donor history from future parents.

In its written judgment, the court said the donor, identified under Dutch privacy guidelines as Jonathan M., provided sperm to several fertility clinics in the Netherlands and one in Denmark, as well as many others he contacted through advertisements and online forums . The donor’s lawyer told the court hearing that he wanted to help parents who would otherwise not be able to conceive. The judge in the civil case said the donor “deliberately lied about this in order to convince the parents to accept him as a donor,” the court said in a statement.

“All these parents are now faced with the fact that the children in their families are part of a vast network of kinship, with hundreds of half-siblings, which they did not choose,” the court said. It added that this “has or may have negative psychosocial effects on children. It is therefore in their interest that such kinship networks no longer expand.”