‘Huge Kinship Network, Hundreds of Half-Siblings’: Dutch Court Orders Semen Donor to Stop

Dutch judges on Friday ordered a man suspected of fathering more than 550 children through sperm donations to stop donating, in the latest fertility scandal to shock the Netherlands. The man, identified in Dutch media only as “Jonathan M.”, 41, was dragged to court by a foundation protecting the rights of donor children and the mother of one of the children allegedly fathered from his sperm. The court therefore “prohibits the defendant from donating his semen to new prospective parents after the issuing of this judgement,” judge Thera Hesselink said. “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.