A Dutch court has banned a sperm donor from, um... making any more donations after it was discovered that he'd fathered at least 550 children.
The Hague District Court ruled for Jonathan M. to immediately stop donating his sperm under Dutch privacy rules.
The court also ruled that the sperm still in storage should be destroyed except if it was already reserved for parents.
According to the preliminary relief judge, he lied to parents. He deliberately misinformed them about how many children he had already fathered and how many he was still planning to father.
The clinic's guidelines say donors are only allowed to father a maximum of 25 children with 12 mothers. This prevents "inbreeding, incest, and psychological problems for donor children."
Jonathan M. spread his seed way past that limitation by donating sperm to 13 clinics in the Netherlands and abroad. He also violated rules by making direct contact with prospective parents.
Jonathan then took it a step further.
He went the extra mile to help his 550+ children connect with their roots by creating an online platform to voluntarily decide to bond with their siblings or biological father.
He said his approach to parenting children should be considered "an entirely new concept."
Stitching Donorkind, the nonprofit organization that advocates for people whose biological parent was a donor and a mother who has a child conceived with M.'s sperm, filed the proceedings and argued that a mass donation by one person could also be psychologically damaging for mothers.
Some of the mothers said they were led to believe that Jonathan did not donate his sperm frequently and now feel as though they have involuntarily taken part in "a strange social experiment."
The court statement said:
At its core, this case is about conflicting fundamental rights. On the one hand, the right with regard to the privacy of the parents and the donor children, protected by Article 8 of the [European Convention on Human Rights], and on the other hand, the same right of the donor.
The Court in preliminary relief proceedings is of the opinion that the interests of the donor children and their parents outweigh the interest of the donor in continuing to donate sperm to new prospective parents in the event of a ban on donating sperm to new prospective parents.
I don't" know what this man's game plan was, but he is def a weirdo.
He lied, broke the rules, and created negative psychological consequences for the parents and the children.
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 is, therefore, in their interest that this kinship network is not extended any further.
