Last updated on January 16th, 2022 at 12:36 pm
A Japanese woman gave up her baby after discovering that the sperm donor she turned to for pregnancy had lied to her about his marital status, ethnicity, and cultural background. Now she is suing the donor – the first time this has happened in the Asian country.
Pregnant at the tenth attempt
The woman found a 20-year-old sperm donor on social media who claimed to have graduated from one of Japan’s top universities and to be Japanese. He also told the woman that he was single. According to reports, the woman and the donor tried to have a child: though she was already married, she had sex with the sperm donor ten times and, in June 2019, were finally successful.
False information for sex
But then the woman discovered that the donor was actually a Chinese citizen married to another woman and had not graduated from Kyoto University, as he had claimed. When the woman learned the truth, it was too late to abort and she gave birth to the baby. Japanese media reported that the baby is now in the care of a child care facility in Tokyo. The woman has since sued the donor for the equivalent of about $2.8 million for emotional distress, claiming that the donor gave her false information for the sole purpose of having sex with her.
Internet Donors
Newsweek states that many Japanese women are buying sperm online and then artificially inseminating themselves with do-it-yourself practice. An estimated 10,000 babies are born in Japan using this method. Hiroshi Okada, director of the Mirai Life Research Institute, then raises the alarm to Japan Insider : “The sperm that is delivered can carry infectious agents. We don’t know whether the sperm belongs to the donor or not. When the baby is born, it may turn out that the sperm is not Japanese. Crazy things are happening.”