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Father of hundreds gets sperm donation ban from Dutch court

Father of hundreds gets sperm donation ban from Dutch court

Frozen vials of sperm are seen preserved in an azote-cooled container in a laboratory in Paris, France, Sep 13, 2019. (File photo: Reuters/Christian Hartmann)

THE HAGUE: A Dutch court on Friday (Apr 28) ordered a man who judges said had fathered between 500 and 600 children around the world to stop donating sperm, in the latest fertility scandal to shock the Netherlands. 

Dutch clinical guidelines say a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families.

The 41-year-old Dutchman, identified by de Telegraaf newspaper as Jonathan Meijer, was forbidden to donate more semen to clinics, the court ruling said. He could be fined €100,000 (US$110,000) per infraction.

The court ordered Meijer to write to clinics abroad asking them to destroy any of his semen they have in stock, except doses reserved for parents who already had children by him.

He also may not 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," a judge said in a written judgement.

The decision came after a civil case started by a foundation representing the interests of donor children and Dutch parents who had used Meijer as a donor.

They argued that Meijer's continued donations violated the right to a private life of his donor children, whose ability to form romantic relationships are hampered by fears of accidental incest and inbreeding.

Meijer's mass donations first came to light in 2017 and he was banned from donating to Dutch fertility clinics, where he had already fathered more than 100 children.

However, he continued to donate abroad, including to the Danish sperm bank Cryos which operates internationally. Meijer also continued to offer himself as a donor on sites matching prospective parents with sperm donors, sometimes using a different name, according to the Algemeen Dagblad daily. 

"The donor deliberately misinformed prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered in the past," the Hague District Court said in a separate statement.

"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 considered it "sufficiently plausible" that this has or could have negative psychosocial consequences for the children.

The case is the latest in a series of fertility scandals to hit the Netherlands.

In 2020 a deceased gynaecologist was accused of fathering at least 17 children with women thinking they were receiving sperm from anonymous donors.

The year before, in 2019, it emerged that a Rotterdam doctor fathered at least 49 children while inseminating women seeking treatment.

Source: Agencies/zl

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