Amendment to the Donor Data Law

New Method of Registration

In recent months, every registered unique donor has been assigned a donor code. All registered women have received a mother code, which is linked to the donor code of the donor whose reproductive cells were used in their treatment. A maximum of 12 mother codes are available per donor. With this new method of registration, the Cdkb and clinics now have better visibility into the number of children conceived via clinics per donor in the past.

Professional Guidelines

From 2004 to 2018, clinics followed the professional guideline allowing a maximum of 25 offspring per donor. Since 2018, this guideline was revised to a maximum of 12 families per donor. To avoid confusion in determining whether this guideline has been exceeded, the upper limit of 25 offspring per donor has been taken as the reference point. Before and after 2018, the goal has always been to limit the number of offspring per donor.

Exceeding the Guideline

It has become clear that several donors have exceeded this national maximum of 25 offspring.

If you underwent treatment with donor sperm between 2004–2018 and would like information about your specific situation, please visit: www.donorverleden-mck.nl

For additional information or to request details via a digital form, you can also use this website.

If you are a donor and wish to know more about your donations and the number of offspring, please contact the clinic where you were active as a donor. They will inform you how many children have been registered with them. Please note that these numbers are based on the data currently held by the Cdkb. If a donor has not yet reached the maximum of 12 women, additional treatments may still take place. For treatments before 2004, not all may be registered with the Cdkb, as the Donor Data Law for Artificial Insemination didn’t exist at that time.

Children over the age of 16 can contact the Cdkb to find out how many half-brothers and half-sisters they have. Children under 16 can have their mother reach out to the clinic on their behalf.

Clinics aim to respond within two weeks.

Reasons for Exceeding the Guideline

There are several reasons why the guideline may have been exceeded:

• A donor may have already had 25 offspring, but a woman may have wanted a second or third child with the same donor. Clinics often honoured these requests to support family formation.

• If donated sperm was used in an IVF/ICSI treatment, embryos may have been stored for future use. As women have control over these embryos, they could later choose to use them for additional children without consideration for the donor’s existing number of offspring.

• The number of pregnancies registered by clinics does not always reflect the number of children born. For example, miscarriages or stillbirths may not have been removed from the system, and one registered pregnancy may result in multiple births.

• In the past, donor sperm was exchanged between clinics—for reasons such as a woman moving, seeking a second opinion, or inter-bank transfers. However, treatment data was not exchanged due to privacy concerns.

• The updated registration system has also revealed that some donors were active at multiple clinics without the clinics being aware. In some cases, this had been identified earlier and clinics discontinued use of the donor.

For more information or to request details using a digital form, visit: www.donorverleden-mck.nl

Please note that due to high demand, phone availability may be limited. The digital form allows you to submit your question directly, and you will receive a response within two weeks.

Fiom Can Support You

News about a large number of half-siblings can impact your child, you as a parent, and your family. On the Fiom website, an expertise centre on family relationships, you can find helpful resources on how to cope with this. Fiom also offers short-term support.

You can also find more information on the website of the National Information Point for Donor Conception (LIDC): www.donorconceptie.nl