$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.
Indiana became the first state in the U.S. to make it illegal for fertility doctors to use their own sperm without a patient's consent. However, today there is still no federal law that makes Cline's acts a criminal offense.
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.
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.
Wife and children
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).
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.
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.”
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.
Donald Cline inseminated dozens of women with his own sperm without their knowledge or consent during the 1970s and 1980s. He had an estimated 94 children.
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.
Cline's jail sentence of 365 days was suspended. He gave up his medical license, even though it had expired that same year. Cline, now in his 80s, is retired from medical practice. It's unclear if he still lives in the Indianapolis area, where at least a dozen of his biological children still reside.
On Wednesday, Netflix debuted “Our Father,” a documentary about Indiana fertility doctor Dr. Donald Cline and the 94 donor siblings he fathered by impregnating patients unknowingly at an Indianapolis fertility clinic.
Our Father is an American Netflix original documentary film directed by Lucie Jourdan and produced by Michael Petrella and Jason Blum. Its story follows former Indianapolis based fertility doctor Donald Cline, who, in a case of fertility fraud, used his own sperm to impregnate dozens of unsuspecting patients.
67 of the 69 children were said to have survived infancy. Allegedly Vassilyev also had six sets of twins and two sets of triplets with a second wife, for another 18 children in eight births; he fathered a total of 87 children. The claim is disputed as records at this time were not well kept.
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.
Our Father tells the story of Jacoba Ballard and her half-siblings — over 50 people in total — who discovered that they were all paternally related through Donald Cline, a former fertility doctor in Indianapolis.
She's introduced pretty early on, and over the course of the film, the sibling count rises. At the end, it's revealed that there are at least 94 Cline siblings.
A haunting examination of Dr. Quincy Fortier, a fertility specialist who used his own sperm to impregnate an untold number of women.
A couple starts to suspect that their acclaimed fertility doctor has sinister intentions for their unborn child. A couple starts to suspect that their acclaimed fertility doctor has sinister intentions for their unborn child.
“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.
He pleaded guilty to those and paid a $500 fine. During his sentencing, several church elders provided character statements in Cline's favor. Cline and his group, Indianapolis Infertility, Inc., paid out more than $1.3 million in settlements in civil cases filed by three donor children and/or their families.
And Our Father reveals that Cline fathered 94 children with his patients at the time of filming.