Despite being banned from donating to fertility clinics in the Netherlands in 2017, he continued to donate sperm online and abroad. As a result of his actions, a court in The Hague has ordered him to desist from donating again or he could face a fine of over €100,000 (£88,000).
The court has also ordered him to provide a list of all the clinics he used and instruct them to destroy his sperm. Jonathan was accused of misleading hundreds of women by fathering more than the number of children allowed under Dutch clinical guidelines. The guidelines specify that a donor should not father more than 25 children in 12 families and limit the number of times they donate sperm to reduce the possibility of siblings having children together unwittingly.
Judges in this case found that Jonathan helped produce more than 550 children since he began donating sperm in 2007. The man was taken to court by a foundation protecting donor children’s rights and a mother whose child was allegedly fathered by Jonathan’s sperm. The court stated that the number of children fathered by Jonathan was too large and could have negative psychosocial consequences for the children involved.
The court banned Jonathan from donating his semen to new prospective parents and from advertising his services or joining any organization that establishes contact between prospective parents. The defendant was reportedly found to have “deliberately misinformed” prospective parents about the number of children he had already fathered, leaving these parents to grapple with the reality that the children in their family are part of a huge kinship network that they did not choose.
This case is not the first fertility scandal to hit the Netherlands. In 2019, a Dutch fertility doctor was confirmed as the father of 49 children after using his own sperm to inseminate patients without their consent.
