A Dutch court has told a man that he can’t donate any more sperm because he fathered at least 550 children in the Netherlands and other countries and lied to potential parents about how many children he had helped have.
On Friday, a judge at The Hague District Court stopped an injunction brought by the mother of a child who was created with the donor’s sperm and a group of parents.
The mother, whose name was only given as “Eva” by the foundation, was happy with the court’s ruling.
“I hope that this decision will lead to a ban on mass donations and spread to other countries like an oil spill. In a statement, Eva said, “We need to stand together around our children and protect them from this unfairness.”
The court said that according to Dutch rules, sperm donors can have up to 25 children with 12 different mothers, and the donor lied to potential parents about his donation past.
The donor, whose name is Jonathan M because of Dutch privacy laws, gave sperm to several fertility clinics in the Netherlands and to a clinic in Denmark. He also gave sperm to many other people he met through ads and online groups.
During a court hearing, the donor’s lawyer said that his client wanted to help people who couldn’t have children otherwise.
The judge who heard the civil case said that the donor “deliberately lied about this” to get the parents to let him be a donor.
“All of these parents are now faced with the fact that their children are part of a huge kinship network with hundreds of half-siblings that they did not choose,” the court said, adding that this “could possibly have negative psychosocial consequences for the children.”
The case was about “basic rights that were in conflict. On the one hand, parents and donor children have the right to have their privacy respected. “On the other hand, the donor has the same right,” it said.
The court decided that “the interests of the donor children and their parents are more important than the donor’s desire to keep giving sperm to people who want to have children.”