Imane Rachidi |
The Hague (EFE) massive and cases of incest between people born by sperm donation.
In the Netherlands, sperm donors can father a maximum of 25 children in twelve families in total, a measure intended to prevent incest and inbreeding among children born from such treatments with donated sperm, but not all countries have this limit. (a Danish donor can have hundreds of descendants), nor has this always been true in the Dutch clinics themselves, which has led to numerous scandals.
Gynecologists in the donation working group of the Dutch Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology (NVOG) have asked their colleagues in Denmark to set an overall limit on the number of children born by sperm donation that a donor can have, since the The absence of this condition worldwide is “problematic”, according to what was published in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.
Women in the Netherlands can receive treatments with foreign donor sperm at ten of the country’s thirteen fertility clinics, and can receive sperm mainly from commercial banks in Denmark, which supply many clinics around the world and accept sperm from foreign donors.
Candidates for parents turn to commercial banks in Denmark because the waiting lists in the Netherlands are long and they cannot select the donor either, which is possible in Danish banks, which are not very transparent with numbers.
Dutch gynecologists also want the intended parents and the sperm donor himself to be able to find out how many children have been born by insemination with the donor’s semen in question, and each child should know, if he wants, how many half-siblings he has and what their origins are, regardless of the country where the sperm donation occurred.
scandals
Last April, a Dutch court ordered Jonathan M., a 41-year-old sperm donor who admits to having at least 550 biological children, to stop providing his semen to prospective parents in order to protect the children from the “negative psychosocial consequences” that He has to have “hundreds of half-siblings who did not choose.”
“In essence, this case deals with conflicting fundamental rights. On the one hand, the right to privacy of parents and children of donors, protected by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and, on the other hand, the same right of the donor. The court is of the opinion that the interests of the children born by donation and their parents outweigh the interest of the donor to continue donating sperm to new future parents”, determined the Court.
It was easy for him to circumvent the rules because the Dutch clinics do not share data between them and there is no information about agreements that are reached privately between interested parties and men who offer their sperm through online platforms and social networks, something that Jonathan M also used to donate semen in different countries.
At the hearing, the prosecution asserted that Jonathan M.’s actions are dangerous, “given the scientifically proven risk of inbreeding, incest, and negative psychosocial consequences for donor-born children,” and hinders the “children’s” sexual freedom because they must check if a potential mate is not a half-sibling of theirs.
Jonathan M. invoked his “right to freely decide whether to continue donating sperm” and defended that he was not “acting for his own interest, but for the future parents, whom he wants to help”, thus denying that this “harms” these children and their parents.
“I am presented as some kind of rabid bull with a procreative drive. I’m not. I don’t believe in evolution, but in creation, ”she defended herself.
In addition to this case, at least ten gynecologists were identified in the Netherlands who used their semen without the knowledge of women who wanted to get pregnant in their fertility clinics. One of them is Jan Karbaat, with 81 confirmed children. Or gynecologist Jan Wildschut, who fathered at least 47 children.
The latest case came to light last November. A Dutchman, who recently died of esophageal cancer, donated his sperm to women he contacted online and would have fathered at least 80 children in the Netherlands.
