A new Netflix documentary has fans equally fascinated and repulsed. “Our Father” follows the story of Dr. Donald Cline, an Indianapolis-based fertility doctor who secretly used his own sperm to impregnate at least 50 women in the 1970s and 1980s.
Dr. Cline was also the subject of an article in The Atlantic which was published in 2019. The publication explained how DNA testing led to the exposure of the doctor’s crime, with siblings discovering each other’s existence thanks to popular sites such as ancestry.com. The documentary expands on this investigation, interviewing some of these “siblings” about how Dr. Cline swapped their intended father’s sperm for his own.
The synopsis for the movie reads:
Jacoba Ballard was conceived through a sperm donor using artificial insemination. Growing up as an only child, she dreamed of having siblings. After using an at-home DNA test, Ballard discovered that she had not one but seven half-siblings. Unfortunately, this isn’t a story about one happy family reunion. As the group of siblings set out to learn more about their curious family tree, they uncovered a sickening truth: Their parents’ fertility doctor had been inseminating his patients with his own sperm — without their consent.
According to the Atlantic expose, six of the victims confronted Cline at a restaurant when the doctor was in his 70s. The meeting was set up by Cline’s son.
Shockingly, at the time Cline was exposed there were no laws making his actions illegal. The fertility doctor pleaded guilty to two felony counts of obstructing justice by lying to state investigators about using his own sperm at his fertility clinic. He received a one-year suspended jail sentence in 2017 and has served no time.
Many of the patients did agree to use anonymous donor sperm, not realizing their doctor was providing the samples himself. However, at this point in time the fertility industry was just starting out and there weren’t catalogs of donors that could be whittled down based on physical or other characteristics. As The Atlantic reported, the process was often shrouded in secrecy, with doctors recommending parents never tell their children how they were conceived.
For example, victim Liz White had been trying to conceive for two and a half years using the IVF process and her husband’s frozen sperm. Upon finding out Dr. Cline secretly provided the sperm which led to her children’s conception, White said, “I feel like I was raped 15 times.” White had agreed to using the fresh sperm of a medical resident who resembled her husband, but not to using the doctor’s sample. She claims Cline’s actions crossed a line and made her feel violated.
The documentary “Our Father” premieres on Netflix May 11.
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Source: Dailywire
