The 41-year-old mass donor M. may no longer donate seed to new prospective parents, the preliminary relief judge in The Hague decided on Friday. Each violation will result in a fine of 100,000 euros. Jonathan must also immediately remove all advertisements and messages on forums in which he offers himself as a donor.
The preliminary injunction was brought by the Donor Child Foundation, representing the interests of a group of donor children and their parents, together with Eva, the mother of one of his donor children.
Jonathan M. has fathered about 550 children in the past decade. Dutch clinics have a maximum number of children of 25 per sperm donor, or 12 families. M. circumvented those rules, among other things, by offering himself to prospective parents on various online forums without the intervention of clinics. He also donated to eleven Dutch and several foreign fertility clinics, but they do not exchange their data. An amendment to the Artificial Insemination Donor Data Act is currently being considered, to enshrine a maximum number of families per donor in the law.
Come Children
The Donorkind Foundation and several mothers who had children from M.’s seed are concerned about the future of their children, who have exceptionally large families. “His conduct is reprehensible and harmful, given the scientifically substantiated risk of inbreeding, incest and negative psychosocial consequences for donor children,” claimants Stichting Donorkind and mother Eva say in the summons of the summary proceedings.
Research has been done on other groups of donor children, which shows that “large numbers of children per donor can lead to tension, jealousy, rivalry, frustration, powerlessness, sadness, guilt, worry and uncertainty,” the plaintiffs write in the summons. These studies also reveal the struggle of these children to relate to all their half-siblings, and the identity struggle that entails.
During the hearing on Thursday, April 13, Jonathan suggested that his donor children should disclose on their social media who their donor is in order to prevent incest. The court does not agree with that.
“Who these children are biologically descended from, information that belongs to their privacy and freely sharing it with the rest of the world . . . cannot reasonably be asked and expected of them.”
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