Our Father

2022 - 5 - 12

'Our Father' on Netflix: Lingering Questions From the Documentary ... (CNET)

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. No one in the office? (An actor for Cline is used in other parts of the film to re-create scenes). "They were in fear that other races were infiltrating and the white race would eventually disappear," she says. It's implied in the doc that Cline collected his own sperm just before he inseminated patients. 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.

'Our Father' review: Netflix documentary urns a fertility doctor's ... (CNN)

There have been other stories about fertility doctors who abused their positions, and even a short-lived Fox drama built around the idea.

Netflix has enjoyed its share of success with similarly themed and executed fare, "The Tinder Swindler" being a recent example. The sense of violation that this story entails is almost palpable, and "Our Father" certainly conveys that. It's nonetheless remarkable hearing one of the children discuss finding out about being connected to Cline by watching an episode of "Dr. Phil."

Our Father movie review & film summary (2022) | Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert)

Jourdan uses hackneyed techniques, often undermining, and worst yet, trivializing these crimes.

And the obvious reenactments of an actor playing Cline in scenes with the real-life Ballard are strained, at best; amateurish at worst. In this plastic documentary, they’re the only tangible link to reality. For much of the film, the primary question eating at the victims is “why?”—what would drive Cline to inseminate these women? The unnecessary part, however, springs from the sound of a man moaning whenever the number increases. Thanks to popular titles like “Abducted in Plain Sight,” “Making a Murderer,” “The Keepers,” and “ Tiger King,” among many others, Netflix has built a reputation through its true crime documentaries. With its wild twists and turns, the genre has lent itself well to the “win the internet news cycle” of memes and gifs preferred by the streaming giant.

Our Father review – an undeniably gripping tale of a fertility doctor's ... (The Guardian)

Simple, unbelievable and simply unbelievable. That, roughly, is the arc of Lucie Jourdan's 90-minute Netflix documentary about fertility doctor Donald Cline ...

It gives too little space to the unresponsiveness of the district attorney’s office – alerted by Jacoba early on – and the extraordinary fact that it was impossible to prosecute Cline over what he did to the women because none of that amounted to a crime under the then-current law. The best of the true-crime documentaries that are now strewn across Netflix and other platforms take their stories as starting points, thin ends of wedges with which to crack open wider issues. Her children go to school with the children of another sibling and her husband unknowingly coached them all at softball. The Smiths went to Cline, who had a reputation as the best in what was then the new field of fertility treatment and artificial insemination. The good doctor – and devout Christian, church elder and respected member of the community – told them that medical students were used as donors, each no more than three times to limit any future problems with consanguinity (the medical term for unwitting siblings later having children together). The couple went ahead and nine months later Jacoba was born. That, roughly, is the arc of Lucie Jourdan’s 90-minute Netflix documentary about fertility doctor Donald Cline, who spent 30 years secretly using his own sperm to impregnate the women who came to him for treatment.

'Our Father' Review: A Doctor's God Complex Revealed (The New York Times)

A new documentary tells the story of siblings who unite to bring to justice the fertility specialist who impregnated their mothers with his sperm without ...

The last sibling interviewed in “Our Father” is No. 61. But it is the siblings — their anguish and their anger, as well as the compassion they extend to one another — that drive the narrative. Cline’s deception upends the lives of his unsuspecting patients’ children, and the film is rife with harrowing insights about medical malfeasance and God complexes.

Netflix's <i>Our Father</i> Tells The True Story of a Fertility Doctor ... (TIME)

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.

Where Is Dr. Donald Cline From <i>Our Father</i> Now? (ELLE.com)

Netflix released the documentary Our Father, the story of Dr. Donald Cline, a man who used his own sperm to inseminate his patients at his Indianapolis ...

“Cline did everything in his power to silence them and the making of this film.” Many of them live within a tight radius of one another in Indiana, and unfortunately close to Cline. It seems as though many of these adult half-siblings simply want for their story to be told, as they did not get much justice in court. Once the secret began to come out, Cline was practically begging his unacknowledged kids to keep the story secret, insisting it would ruin his standing in his church and community. It was also noted that his clinic was filled with Christian artwork and decorations and it's heavily implied in the documentary that he had some sort of religious reason for creating lots of blonde blue-eyed children. A lawyer in the film explained Cline could not be charged with rape (or no one would do it). As many of the victims and experts explain, Cline had to masturbate somewhere nearby the women awaiting insemination. This week, Netflix released the documentary Our Father, the story of Dr. Donald Cline, a man who used his own sperm to inseminate his patients at his Indianapolis fertility clinic.