The “world’s most prolific sperm donor” who has fathered 600 children is now banned from donating over fears of “accidental incest”.
The serial sperm donor, Jonathan Jacob Meijer, has been ordered by courts to stop donating in the latest fertility scandal to shock the Netherlands.
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The 41-year-old was dragged to court by the Donorkind Foundation, an organisation that protects the rights of donor children, and the mother of one of the children allegedly fathered from his sperm.
Dutch clinical guidelines say a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families, but judges said the man had helped produce between 550 and 600 children since he started as a sperm donor in 2007.
The court therefore “prohibits the defendant from donating his semen to new prospective parents after the issuing of this judgement”, judge Thera Hesselink said.
They argued that Meijer’s continued donations violated the right to a private life of his donor children, as they feared his kids would struggle to form romantic relationships due to the possibilities of accidental incest and inbreeding.
“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 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.
This included psychological problems around identity and fears of incest.
“The point is that this kinship network with hundreds of half-brothers and half-sisters is much too large,” court spokesman Gert-Mark Smelt told AFP.
“The interests of the children weigh too heavily and that is why it is forbidden for the gentleman to give further semen,” he said.
It was the Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology that first raised the alarm about Meijer, who hails from The Hague, in 2017.
By that point, Meijer had fathered at least 102 children in the Netherlands after donating sperm in 10 clinics.
He was later blacklisted in his home country, but he simply began donating sperm abroad instead.
A Dutch woman named Eva who gave birth to a child conceived with Meijer’s sperm in 2018, said she was grateful that the court stopped the man from “mass donations that’s spread like wildfire to other countries.
“I’m asking the donor to respect our interests and to accept the verdict, because our children deserve to be left alone,” she said in a statement.
“If I had known he had already fathered more than 100 children I would never have chosen him.
“If I think about the consequences this could have for my child I am sick to my stomach.
“Many mothers have told him he needs to stop but nothing helps. So going to court is the only option. I have to protect my child,” she added.
Following Eva’s case, the court also 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.
Mark de Hek, the lawyer for the foundation, said that Meijer had broken a pledge to father no more than 25 children.
And authorities in the Netherlands have now updated the law so that donors can only donate sperm to up to 12 women.
This comes after one American sperm donor went on tour to impregnate more women after already fathering 55 kids.
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