Don Cline: Sentence, Settlements, and Indiana Fertility Fraud Law

Donald Cline is a former Indianapolis fertility doctor who secretly used his own sperm to inseminate patients throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, fathering at least 94 children without the knowledge or consent of the women he treated. His deception surfaced decades later through consumer DNA testing. He was ultimately convicted of two felony counts of obstruction of justice for lying to investigators, received a fully suspended one-year sentence with no jail time, permanently surrendered his medical license, paid more than $1.3 million across three civil settlements, and became the catalyst for Indiana passing the country’s first fertility fraud statute.¹²

How the Deception Came to Light

Cline opened his Indianapolis fertility clinic in 1979 and practiced until retiring in 2009.³ For decades, no one knew what he had done. That changed in 2014, when Jacoba Ballard, a woman conceived at the clinic through what her mother believed was anonymous donor insemination, took an at-home DNA test. She expected to find one or two half-siblings. The results connected her to multiple people who shared the same biological father: their mothers’ doctor.⁴

Ballard filed a complaint with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office, which opened a civil investigation.⁵⁶¹ Cline initially denied the allegations, then acknowledged using his own sperm in roughly 50 instances.³

Why He Was Not Charged With a Sex Crime

Prosecutors ran into a wall. At the time Cline committed his acts, Indiana had no law prohibiting a fertility doctor from using his own sperm on patients.² The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office grand jury division, led by deputy prosecutor Tim DeLaney, examined other theories and found that statutes of limitations had run out on most potential charges. DeLaney also noted that Indiana juries had historically resisted “rape by deception” arguments, because they tended to view the insemination procedures themselves as consensual medical acts.⁵

The prosecution’s opening came from Cline himself. During the Attorney General’s civil investigation, he provided written statements denying that he had ever used his own sperm. Investigators could prove those denials were false. In 2016, he was charged with two counts of felony obstruction of justice based on the lies.⁵

The Sentence

Cline pleaded guilty in 2017 in what’s known as an open plea, meaning he entered the plea without a negotiated deal and left sentencing entirely to the judge. He asked the court to reduce the felonies to misdemeanors. That request was denied.⁷ Marion Superior Court Judge Helen Marchal sentenced him to one year in jail, fully suspended, along with a $500 fine and probation. He served no time behind bars.²

The outcome drew sharp public criticism. Liz White, a former patient, said: “I was raped 15 times and didn’t even know it. There was no consent. He didn’t give me a choice.”¹

Loss of Medical License

Cline had already retired in 2009 but still held an active Indiana medical license. On August 23, 2018, his attorney surrendered that license before the Indiana Medical Licensing Board. The seven-member panel then voted to permanently bar him from ever applying for reinstatement.⁸ Laura Iosue, Indiana’s supervising deputy attorney general, told the board the conduct was “particularly egregious” and added, “The important thing is that Dr. Cline doesn’t practice anymore.”⁹

Civil Settlements and the Ongoing Litigation

Several of Cline’s biological children and their families have pursued civil claims against him and his practice, Indianapolis Infertility, Inc. By May 2022, three cases had settled for a combined total of more than $1.3 million, with three additional cases still pending. Each settlement followed the same structure dictated by Indiana’s Medical Malpractice Act: roughly $100,000 from Cline’s insurance carrier and $350,000 from the state’s Patients Compensation Fund.¹⁰

Because Indiana’s fertility fraud statute is not retroactive, plaintiffs suing Cline have had to bring their claims as medical malpractice cases. That has led to a difficult statute-of-limitations question, which reached the Indiana Court of Appeals in 2025 in a case brought by a plaintiff identified only as “Anonymous Child 1.” She was born in 1985 to parents who believed they were using the husband’s sperm, not any donor’s, and she learned Cline was her biological father only after a 23andMe test in May 2022. She filed suit within 20 days.¹¹

The trial court had ruled her claim was too late, reasoning that public reporting on Cline’s fraud by the end of 2019 gave her a duty to investigate her own DNA. On May 15, 2025, a unanimous Court of Appeals panel reversed. Judge Elaine Brown wrote that when a “person of reasonable diligence” would have pursued DNA testing is a fact question for a jury, not one a judge can decide as a matter of law, and that media coverage of Cline does not automatically start the clock for every former patient.¹²¹³ The case can now proceed to trial.

The Indiana Fertility Fraud Law

The gap that limited Cline’s prosecution is what victims and their families set out to close. Liz White and her son Matt White led lobbying at the Indiana Statehouse, joined by members of the growing group of Cline’s biological children. Ballard described her own approach as starting by “driving an Indiana state senator crazy.”¹⁴

Senate Bill 174 was introduced in the 2019 session. As originally drafted, it would have made fertility fraud a Level 6 felony. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-3 to strip the criminal provision, with Senator Mike Young arguing existing laws were sufficient.¹⁴ What passed created a civil cause of action, allowing affected patients and their children to seek compensatory damages, punitive damages, or liquidated damages of $10,000. The law includes extended limitations periods: up to ten years from the child’s eighteenth birthday, or five years from the discovery of DNA evidence, a relevant recording, or a confession. It took effect July 1, 2019.¹⁵ The statute is not retroactive, which is why Cline’s own victims cannot use it.¹¹

The Netflix Documentary and Privacy Lawsuits

The case reached a much larger audience in May 2022 with the release of Our Father, a Netflix documentary that followed Ballard’s investigation and featured several of Cline’s biological children and their mothers. The film prompted additional people to test their DNA. The Anonymous Child 1 plaintiff, for instance, said watching the documentary was what pushed her to run a 23andMe test.¹¹

The film also generated its own litigation. Three women, Lori Kennard, Sarah Bowling, and Laura DiSalvo, sued Netflix and production company Realhouse Productions in 2022, alleging invasion of privacy after their names appeared in the film without consent. The cases were moved to federal court in Indianapolis and consolidated. Kennard’s name had appeared on screen for about one second in a scene showing a subject scrolling through 23andMe results. Netflix called the failure to blur her name an “honest mistake”; the names were eventually obscured, but only after the documentary had been viewed more than 18 million times.¹⁶

In December 2024, a jury returned a split verdict. Kennard was awarded $385,000 for emotional distress.¹⁷ Bowling received nothing; the jury found she had previously disclosed her connection to the case and had reached out to a documentary producer. DiSalvo’s claims had been dismissed before trial because she provided a childhood photo for the project, which the court ruled showed she had not tried to keep her identity private.¹⁶ The court had earlier barred punitive damages, ruling that Netflix and Realhouse did not act with malice.

The Impact on Cline’s Biological Children

Because so many of Cline’s biological children grew up in the same Indianapolis region, unaware of each other, offspring have described genuine fear about consanguinity, including the possibility that half-siblings could have unknowingly dated or had children together.³

Health concerns run alongside those fears. A notable proportion of Cline’s biological children have reportedly developed autoimmune disorders, which some have linked to Cline’s own diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that would have disqualified him as a donor under his own clinic’s eligibility criteria.³

The emotional toll continues to surface in court filings. The Anonymous Child 1 plaintiff described her first reaction as “outright denial,” calling it “too unfathomable” that her fertility doctor could be her biological father. She has kept her identity sealed in part because the man who raised her, her legal father, still does not know he is not her biological parent. Cline’s half-siblings have maintained a private Facebook group, and new members continue to join as more people take DNA tests and discover the connection.¹¹

1
Time. Our Father True Story
2
The Indiana Lawyer. No Jail for Fertility Doctor Who Lied About Using Own Sperm
3
The Hastings Center. What’s Wrong With a Fertility Doctor Using His Own Sperm?
4
WRTV. 6 Questions With Star of Documentary on Fertility Doc Who Inseminated Patients With His Sperm
5
Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Madeira Serves as Legal Commentator in Netflix’s Our Father
6
Newsweek. Our Father Donald Cline – How Many Children
7
Esquire. Our Father Donald Cline – How Many Children
8
NBC Philadelphia. Fertility Doctor Donald Cline Used Own Sperm, Surrenders License
9
NBC Philadelphia. Fertility Doctor Donald Cline Used Own Sperm, Surrenders License
10
Fox 59. Dr. Donald Cline Pays $1.35M in Donor Siblings’ Civil Case Settlements
11
Indiana Capital Chronicle. Indiana Court of Appeals Weighs Statute of Limitations in Fertility Doctor Deception Case
12
The Indiana Lawyer. Court of Appeals Sends Case Involving Zionsville Fertility Doctor Back to Trial Court
13
Court of Appeals of Indiana. Anonymous Child I v. Anonymous Physician, 24A-CT-1874
14
The Indiana Lawyer. Legislative Panel Deletes Making Fertility Fraud Criminal
15
Indiana Courts. Fertility Fraud
16
IndyStar. Marion County Woman Awarded $385,000 in Our Father Lawsuit
17
The Hollywood Reporter. Netflix Gets Mixed Verdict in Our Father Documentary