24-Year Old Man Has 16 Surrogate Babies With Plans For More And This Is Morally Wrong

baby bellyIn news sure to leave you scratching your head, a 24-year old Japanese business man appears to be attempting to populate the world with as many of his own children as possible. What started off as babies from two surrogate mothers has quickly expanded to include 16 children that authorities know of spanning over Thailand, Japan and Cambodia. The story only gets weirder from here.

According to NPR, Mitsutoki Shigeta has 16 surrogate babies and a desire to father many more:

Kokiat said Shigeta hired 11 Thai surrogate mothers to carry his children, including four sets of twins. Police have not determined the biological mothers, Kokiat said.

The founder of a multinational fertility clinic that provided Shigeta with two surrogate mothers said she warned Interpol about him even before the first baby was born in June 2013.

“As soon as they got pregnant, he requested more. He said he wanted 10 to 15 babies a year, and that he wanted to continue the baby-making process until he’s dead,” said Mariam Kukunashvili, founder of the New Life clinic, which is based in Thailand and six other countries. He also inquired about equipment to freeze his sperm to have sufficient supply when he’s older, she said in a telephone interview from Mexico.

I am simply stunned. 10-15 babies a year? Why would the clinic allow him to do this? He cannot possibly be sure they are all being properly cared for. In fact, police raided a condo in Bangkok earlier this month and discovered nine babies living with nine nannies in a few spare rooms with diapers, bottles and playpens everywhere:

“We are looking into two motives. One is human trafficking and the other is exploitation of children,” said police Lt. Gen. Kokiat Wongvorachart, Thailand’s lead investigator in the case. He said Shigeta made 41 trips to Thailand since 2010. On many occasions he traveled to nearby Cambodia, where he brought four of his babies.

Shigeta has not been charged with any crime. He is trying to get his children back ”” the 12 in Thailand are being cared for by social services ”” and he has proven through DNA samples sent from Japan that he is their biological father. He quickly left Thailand after the Aug. 5 raid on the condominium and has said through a lawyer that he simply wanted a large family and has the means to support it.

The biological mothers are as yet unknown and when asked to speak to his motives, the police revealed that Shigeta told the owner of the New Life clinic in Thailand, where he hired 11 surrogates to carry his children, that “he wanted to win elections and could use his big family for voting,” and that “the best thing I can do for the world is to leave many children.” Shigeta’s attorney claims that the idea that he is planning to sell the children is unfounded as they all have legal birth certificates and assets under their name’s. It sounds as though this man literally just wants the world to be full of his descendents.

Besides the obvious creepy-factor of this story, I am deeply disturbed that this fertility clinic facilitated the impregnation of 11 surrogate mothers to have Shigeta’s children. Are there no laws in place to prevent this sort of thing from happening? As the article states, he has not been charged with any crime but it sounds like these countries need surrogacy laws in place to stop someone like Shigeta from raising a legion of his own children. At the end of the day, it is the children that may suffer the consequences of Shigeta’s incredibly strange actions. I don’t know what his long-term plan would be to care for that many children as it does not sound like he is doing it himself. If he has the money I suppose he can hire nannies to do it but what kind of life is that for a child? I’m sure there is a lot more to this story and I plan to stay tuned.

(Image: Evgeny Atamanenko)

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