Our Father

Our Father tells the stories of the victims of Dr. Donald Cline, who inseminated patients with his sperm, without their consent.

While the story Our Father depicts is relatively unique, the violation of a person’s ability to choose the circumstances under which they become pregnant, and the lack of legal protection of that ability, are not. The obstruction of justice charges meant that no evidence related to Cline’s actions toward his former patients was admissible—though those actions constituted the injustice for which the siblings and their parents were truly seeking restitution. In 2018, the siblings’ lobbying, led by Matt White and his mother Liz White, contributed to the passing of Indiana’s fertility-fraud law. “I don’t deny that it was a sexual violation, [but] ‘Dr. Cline committed rape,’ is a legal assertion that was not true, and I wasn’t going to put it on paper with my signature,” Tim Delaney, who was working in the prosecutor’s office in 2015, says in the film. Our Father’s main focus is on highlighting the lack of legal recourse afforded to the siblings and their parents. When the county prosecutors finally investigated Cline, the results were disappointing to the siblings, the women he inseminated, and their families. As the siblings waited for authorities to take action, Cline lived as a pillar of the community and an elder of his church, performing baptisms in his backyard swimming pool. He also began obliquely threatening the siblings with retribution should they continue their effort to bring charges against him and take their story public. In a moment when the right to safe and informed reproductive care is under threat in the U.S., Our Father is particularly resonant given the questions it raises about how our legal system views those seeking control over their own reproductive choices, and restitution when that autonomy is violated. He had his staff recite prayers together, advised patients to pray on their treatment choices, decorated his office with Christian sayings, and had an affinity for the verse Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I knew you.”), which is often featured in material extoling the Quiverfull lifestyle. The number of confirmed siblings continued to grow as more people added their DNA to 23andMe’s database. During the 1970s and ‘80s, a fertility specialist in Indiana named Dr. Donald Cline inseminated dozens of patients with his own sperm, without their knowledge or consent.

Here's what to know about disgraced Indiana fertility doctor Donald Cline.

Sibling Matt White suggests in the film that someone must have known that Cline was inseminating women with his own sperm. We learn in the film that Cline has an affinity for the Bible verse "Jeremiah 1:5," and Ballard notes it's "one of the Bible verses Quiverfull uses." It's unclear if Cline is actually the one speaking in the recording. (An actor for Cline is used in other parts of the film to re-create scenes). It's implied in the doc that Cline collected his own sperm just before he inseminated patients. "They were in fear that other races were infiltrating and the white race would eventually disappear," she says. I don't know," he says in the film. She says the Indiana Attorney General's Office sent her emails, she looked up the people who replied and everyone copied on the emails, and through that, she found that "one of the people with the state" had a "Quiverfull" email address. Quiverfull is an ultra-conservative Christian movement mentioned in the film. Cline is currently alive and in his 80s. The Medical Licensing Board of Indiana revoked his license in 2018. At the end, it's revealed that there are at least 94 Cline siblings.

Netflix has dropped its next biggest hit, with 'Our Father' centring around Dr Donald Cline, who secretly used his own sperm when inseminating his patients.

The documentary shows he was fined $500 and given a year probation. “This was part of the dialogue he had with his patients. Dr Cline was a well-respected, top fertility doctor in Indiana, who says he used the sperm of anonymous medical residents.