A man who has fathered between 550 and 600 children over the past 16 years is not allowed to donate any more sperm to prospective parents, a court in the Netherlands ruled on [April 28].
According to The Hague District Court, the man lied about the number of children he had already fathered, the number of sperm donations he had made and his intention to donate even more sperm.
“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,” the court said.
Dutch lawmakers are in the process of implementing new rules for sperm donors to protect the interests of the children. The Dutch House of Representatives debated the issue this month.
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It has been possible for donor children to request such information since 2004. But the government wants to establish a central registry that would show whether a sperm donor has donated to multiple clinics.
“The new rules would discourage undesirable situations in which sperm donors sometimes father hundreds of children,” according to the proposed bill.
