A master of all investments, Jonathan Jacob Meijer. The Dutchman’s YouTube channel, which dates back roughly 15 years, features thousands of clips of him making music, training, traveling, exercising, philosophizing about living and church, buying shares, eating raw foods, and exploring crypto.
However, hidden behind the picturesque scenes and popular locations that dominate the display showcasing Meijer’s life is the not-so-well-kept solution of the man’s most active hobby: selling his sperm to make what is thought to be thousands of childless children all over the world.
Netflix’s” The Person With 1000 Children” aimed to change that. The three-episode docuseries, which is currently at the top of the streaming platform’s best TV shows, begins by highlighting the stories of many individual women, heterosexual couples, and at least one couple who had an inevitable vasectomy who sought Meijer’s assistance through personal procreation websites to increase their families.
After connecting with him via email, the Netherlands residents made concrete plans to use Meijer’s sperm for rudimentary artificial insemination, or, in some cases, a more traditional babymaking rendezvous. Meijer, who conversed with his clients under various aliases, claimed to avoid sperm banks and was occasionally content to perform his pro bono work.
Turns out Meijer’s ostensibly charitable endeavor, which the women featured in the documentary claim he repeatedly claimed he limited to five families ( an allegation he denies ), was just a facade.
His sperm-selling scheme was exposed when the women who used Meijer to satisfy their desire for children slowly discovered that some of their neighbors, coworkers, and childhood friends were their children’s half-siblings. In order to reduce the risk of incest and inbreeding, the Netherlands only enlists 25 sperm sellers from 12 families, but Meijer’s genetic influence had clearly far outweighed that.
A Road Less Traveled?
Around 2017, it was discovered that Meijer had deposited his DNA at nearly a dozen of his country’s fertility facilities. Through the sale of single-use sperm, Meijer ultimately determined that she had 102 Dutch children.
The reach of Meijer’s international and private procreation, however, was far more difficult to determine thanks to his participation in the world’s largest gamete buying business. Meijer, a frequent globe trotter, is believed to have partnered with Cryos International to spread his seed in dozens of countries.
Cryos admitted to Netflix that it has a” strict stock management system that aims for the outcome of a maximum of 25-50 families worldwide per donor,” but that the contracts it makes suppliers, like Meijer sign are not very enforceable.
In episode two of the docuseries, fertility fraud activist Eve Wiley explained that” these donors can go in and they can bounce around from clinic to clinic to clinic.” ” Even though they sign something that says that they’re not donating elsewhere, there’s nothing to enforce it, because it’s just a guideline and a recommendation, and that’s the problem. More regulated than the fertility industry and sperm donation, when breeding puppies or livestock and cattle.
Companies like Cryos freely advertise the sale of that sperm using childhood photos and search criteria to help buyers choose someone with desirable physical and personality traits as long as men pinky promise they wo n’t hand their DNA to any other fertility clinic.
” We know that this is morally wrong, but just because it’s morally wrong does n’t make it illegal”, Wiley added.
Meijer admitted during a trial that he believes his offspring are closer to 600, but an Australian woman who was sympathetic to his plan estimated, based on a quick search and math, that Meijer had produced” thousands” of children on other continents.
A much higher percentage of Meijer’s children were dispersed across the globe than he initially allowed, according to news reports and a growing Facebook group of women who used the man as a mother. However, when the women asked Meijer for answers or the master list of all the children he had fathered, he threatened to end any and all communication with his biological children.
” We had been totally failed. Both the donor and the sperm bank had failed us. So it was like everyone was in cahoots. No one had cared about the legislation, and the sperm banks just wanted our money”, the Australian woman said.
Whatever the cost, the cost of babies
In April 2023, a Dutch judge ordered Meijer to stop handing out his gametes and destroy any samples he had already given to international banks to reduce the multi-generational risk of inbreeding before his sperm-spreading spree began.
The judge’s decision was motivated by his desire to prevent Meijer’s children from suffering any further harm from the effects of his international breeding plans. Yet, even if their biological dad only fathered the recommended amount of offspring, Meijer’s kids were likely to suffer the psychological, emotional, and physical side effects of outsourced procreation.
Reproductive technologies, such as making babies with supplied sperm that come with no relational strings, are  , morally problematic , because they sideline the natural right children have to a mother and father in favor of adults ‘ selfish desires.
Donor-conceived children often experience pain , when they are distanced from their biological roots. When gametes suppliers realize they wo n’t likely have a fatherly relationship with their own flesh and blood, they also experience emotional pain.
One area of the show is overlooked: Meijer was n’t the only victim of the thousands of fatherless children he brought to the world. The women who put their children at a disadvantage from conception by employing a system that intentionally isolates offspring from their biological roots.
Children born into homes without a present father are  , less likely , to excel in school or even graduate. Fatherless sons, specifically, are  , far less likely , to graduate college by their late-20s than their peers who are raised by their biological parents.
” I just wanted to have a baby, so much so I was n’t thinking rationally”, Patricia, a woman who tried to conceive with Meijer naturally, admitted.
The fact that the women in the show had no trouble choosing Meijer from a list of gametes sellers based on his good looks is another problematic aspect of the sperm selling and buying arrangement.
He has beautiful blond hair and a big smile, and I’m ready to have beautiful babies, Patricia said.
In episode one, an interviewee claimed that looking through the list of men who could father a child was similar to perusing an ice cream menu filled with various “flavors” as she claimed in the interview.
When these same women learned that Meijer might be in cahoots with other serial sperm suppliers to “bleach” Kenya with blond-haired, blue-eyed offspring, however, they acted disgusted at the eugenic undertones.
They quickly abandoned their own objections to Meijer in favor of those who thought he had desirable physical characteristics and who allegedly played” sperm roulette” with someone else who allegedly raised 400 children to see who could produce the most children.
The Man With 1000 Kids is more than just a cautionary tale about curbing creeps who are compelled to sell their sperm to women in search of children, like” The Man With 1000 Kids.” The docuseries also serves as a stark reminder of the emotional, relational, and physical consequences an unchecked, international fertility industry can have on children for years to come.
The Federalist staff writer and host of The Federalist Radio Hour, Jordan Boyd. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordanian completed her political science major at Baylor University and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
