Sperm donation has been the subject of many popular movies and TV shows. Typically it is portrayed in a light-hearted way as an easy money grab for men, but it’s no light task. It’s still giving the gift of life. Although women who donate their eggs undergo a rigorous retrieval process and therefore have less of an opportunity to donate, men simply ejaculate into a cup and can do so fairly limitlessly. Dutch man Jonathan Jacob Meijer has evidently done just that.
In 2023, Meijer was banned from donating any more sperm and sperm banks were required to dispose of any of his remaining samples after it was determined he had fathered roughly 550 different children, according to the Daily Mirror.
Investigations determined that 375 of them live in the Netherlands, while there are 80 in Germany, 35 in Belgium, four in Argentina, and two in Australia. He donated to at least 13 clinics, 11 of them in the Netherlands, where there is a legal limit of fathering no more than 25 children.
He was barred from donating in his home country in 2017 after learning he fathered more than 100 children there. Since he began donating in 2007, he has reportedly lied to several clinics and mothers, assuring each of them he was exclusively donating to them and assured potential new mothers that he had “only” fathered around 10 children.
According to CNN, he is officially barred from donating in the future and if he breaches the order, he’ll face a $110,000 fine.
Meijer was the subject of the Netflix documentary “The Man With 1,000 Kids,” but Meijer claims the documentarians didn’t consult him for the project at all and were factually incorrect about a lot of it.
When appearing on Loose Women, a British talk show, Meijer was asked how he felt about deceiving the women about the actual numbers, and his answer was pretty striking.
“That’s absolutely not right,” he said in the 2024 interview. “I provided them with the best service they could get. I did not charge them any money like the clinic, I gave them fresh sperm, I came to their house and delivered at their door … my identity will be completely open … to me it is quite strange that they feel this way.”
He also believes that he made many families happy and feels no regret or remorse.
