Man who has fathered over 500 children is now facing legal action
A man is now facing legal action for fathering more than 500 children as a sperm donor.
According to a report by ABC News, the lawsuit was filed by the mother of one of his kids in the Netherlands, asking the Dutch court “to help prevent him from donating in the future.”
The 41-year-old identified as Jonathan has been banned from donating his sperm since 2017. At the time, he had fathered 102 children from 11 clinics through the Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Dutch medical guidelines state that a sperm donor is only allowed to father up to 25 babies to prevent incest and psychological problems. Even after his exclusion from the list of eligible sperm donors, however, Jonathan went on to donate his sperm through other fertility clinics in secret.
Donorkind Foundation, an organization aimed at “helping children born via sperm donations who are looking for their origins,” has received several calls from over 30 mothers from different parts of the globe in the past week alone. “They were calling from all over the world. They were all very worried wondering if their child would be coming from the same donor,” said Donorkind chairman Ties van der Meer.
Moving forward, the foundation is looking to prohibit anonymous donations because it makes it “very complicated to control the number of children for each of them.” It’s also requesting the government to get rid of samples stored by the man, “except those to be used by women who already had a baby via his donation and would like to give a sibling to their child.”
As stated in the same report, sperm donors are being paid between $10 (P544) to $20 (P1,089) for every donation in the Netherlands.