Who's your daddy?

Sperm donors are an integral part of helping couples and individuals have families they may otherwise not have. Reputable clinics require donors to undergo rigorous testing and gather an enormous amount of information, genetic and otherwise, which allows the recipients to be well informed about the donor they select.

Some donors choose to make multiple donations, aiding families who want their children to share a genetic father. One donor in the Netherlands, known only as Jonathan M. due to privacy rules, took his obligation to populate the earth to the extreme. Jonathan has fathered at minimum, a whopping 550 children in the Netherlands and other countries.

In 2017 he was banned from donating to Netherland clinics because he had fathered over 100 children at that time. Not deterred, he moved on from the usual donation route to online donation and advertising his services, allowing procreation in other countries.

Citing his goal as wanting to help those otherwise incapable of conceiving, Jonathan is accused of misleading parents as to how many children he fathered and violating Dutch limits for sperm donation. Under Dutch guidelines, the maximum children a person is allowed to father through donation is 25, and it is further restricted to only 12 mothers. This helps lessen the chance that a donor child would unknowingly end up in a romantic relationship with a half-sibling.

Along with others, Eva, a mother of one of Jonathan’s hundreds of children, won a legal injunction in The Hague District Court, banning him from donating further. If he violates the order, Jonathan will be fined $110,000 for each violation. The court noted 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.” Jonathan must list out the clinics he has donated to so that his sperm can be destroyed, with an exception for parents who had already had children with his sperm and stored more for future children.

While royals have engaged in inbreeding for hundreds of years, I doubt any of these families are happy about their newfound relatives. Imagine taking a home DNA test to learn about your biological family and having hundreds of hits for half-siblings. His behavior brings a whole new meaning to the question “who’s your daddy?"