The man named Jonathan, aged 41, could be fined more than €100,000 (£88,000) if he tries to donate again. He was banned from donating to fertility clinics in the Netherlands in 2017 after it emerged he had fathered more than 100 children.
Key Points. Jonathan Meijer, 41, has fathered between 500 and 600 children around the world.
A Dutch court on Friday ordered a man who's fathered at least 550 children around the world to stop donating his sperm. The man, identified as Jonathan Meijer, is no longer allowed to donate his semen to fertility clinics anywhere in the world, the ruling said.
Personal life. Cline has four children with his wife, Audrey, in addition to 94 other children conceived by artificially inseminating women with his own sperm without their knowledge or consent.
Today, Cline has 94 biological children via artificial insemination. If that figure was not haunting enough, at the end of Our Father on Netflix, a title card suggests this figure could be set to rise. It reads: "As of this production, there are currently 94 Cline siblings and counting..."
How many Cline siblings are there? As of the Our Father production, there are currently 94 Cline siblings – however, it's thought that there could be more.
Cline pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and admitted he inseminated patients with his own semen without their consent or knowledge. He was 79 years old at the time of his conviction. He received a one-year suspended sentence, a $500 fine and ultimately, served no prison time. Dr.
Is Dr Donald Cline still married? Yes. He is still married to Susie Audrey Cline, with whom he has two children (Donna and Doug Cline).
One of at least 87 children secretly fathered by an Indiana fertility doctor in the 1970s and '80s sued Netflix Inc. for exposing her identity in the documentary “Our Father.”
During the 1970s and '80s, Cline was widely regarded as one of the best fertility doctors in the business. A family man, church elder and devout Christian, Cline was also highly regarded in his community.
It is claimed that Barbara Stratzmann (c. 1448 – 1503) of Bönnigheim, Germany, gave birth to 53 children (38 sons and 15 daughters) in a total of 29 births by 1498. She had one set of septuplets, one set of sextuplets, four sets of triplets and five sets of twins.
According to a local monastery's report to the government in Moscow, between 1725 and 1765 Mrs Vassilyev popped out 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets, over 27 separate labours. The grand total: 69 children.
The man who is thought to have fathered the most children of all time is Moroccan Sultan Ismail Ibn Sharif (1645 to 1727) with a total of more than 1,000, according to Guinness World Records.
The youngest father in the world is reportedly a boy from China, who, at 9 fathered a child with an 8-year-old girl. This occurred in 1910. There is also a 10-year-old father recorded in the USA, no details about the mother. This happened in 2001.
Women can reproduce for about half of their lifetime and can only give birth about once every year or so. So it makes sense that women can only have a fraction as many children as men. One study estimated a woman can have around 15 pregnancies in a lifetime.
Cline fathered nearly 100 children during the 1970s and 1980s while using his own sperm to impregnate dozens of unsuspecting patients, according to court documents.
At the end, it's revealed that there are at least 94 Cline siblings. Cline was not involved with the documentary or interviewed for it. Lucie Jourdan makes her directorial documentary debut with the film, which comes from Netflix and Blumhouse Pictures.
A top fertility doctor had a sickening secret: he was using his own sperm. Decades later, his “children” came together to pursue justice — this is how they broke the news to their fourteenth (!) sibling. Cline is still alive today, still living in his hometown in Indiana, and is believed to be in his 80s.
At the time The Atlantic's 2019 article on Cline was published, he was in his 80s and still living in his home town of Indianapolis, Indiana.
“Our Father” tells the unsettling story about Dr. Donald Cline, a former Indiana fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate his patients without their knowledge.
$500 Fine and no Jail Time
Instead, the charge that took him there was obstruction of justice — he had lied to prosecutors during their investigation. This meant that the evidence of Cline's actions involving his former patients was not admissible.
Cline himself, whose religious convictions and affiliations, victims believe, border on eugenics, was not interviewed for the documentary—an absence that brings those familiar with the narrative no closer to understanding its central motives.
Donald Cline inseminated dozens of women with his own sperm without their knowledge or consent during the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn't until 2015, when some of the secret children began taking at-home DNA tests, that Cline's covert insemination of the women over his 40-year career was uncovered.
Related Story. Now, Jacoba is an advocate for donor-conceived people. She works with the group Right To Know, which pushes for fertility fraud laws, as a mentor.