In Dec. 2023, Sarah Depoian brought a lawsuit against Dr. Merle Berger, a fertility doctor she accuses of secretly inseminating her with his sperm, leading to the birth of her daughter, Carolyn Bester.
According to the suit, Bester, born in 1981, took a commercially available genealogical DNA test, indicating Berger was her father. Bester’s mother, Depoian, says Dr. Berger told her the sperm used in the treatment was from a medical resident. Dr. Berger’s legal team has denied the allegations, according to CNN.
Infertility can be a difficult and traumatic experience for people who wish to have children. With IVF treatment, however — or eggs extracted from a mother and inseminated in a lab — infertility is now often treatable. But coinciding with the rise of IVF treatment has been at-home DNA testing, and as a result, crimes similar to what Depoian has alleged have been uncovered.
Here’s a closer look at the best true crime documentaries, series, and podcasts on the topic.
Baby God — Dr. Quincy Fortier
Released in 2020, Baby God is an HBO documentary about Dr. Quincy Fortier, a Nevada fertility doctor who, for thirty years, allegedly used his sperm to inseminate patients without their consent. At that time, doing so was not illegal, and as of 2022, it remained a legal grey area in many states.
The documentary follows Wendi Babst, one of Fortier’s biological children. Babst was shocked by the results of an at-home DNA test she took in 2018 and, investigating the matter on her own, discovered Fortier fathered at least 26 of her half-siblings, maybe more.
According to The Guardian, Dr. Fortier died in 2006 at the age of 94.
Our Father — Dr. Donald Cline
Our Father and Sick are a documentary and podcast series, respectively, which cover the story of Dr. Donald Cline. First, Our Father is a 2022 Netflix documentary about Jacoba Ballard, who took an at-home DNA test only to find out she had half-siblings.
From there, Ballard discovered more than 90 half-siblings allegedly fathered at Cline’s Indiana fertility clinic, some of whom appear in the documentary. Cline stopped practicing in 2009, and for some silver lining, his case helped pass Indiana’s fertility fraud law in 2019, among the first of its kind in the country.
“Sick: He’s A Doctor — Why Would He Lie?” and “S1 Update: An Appointment With Dr. Cline”
The first season of the WFYI podcast Sick also covers Dr. Cline. The series tells Jacoba Ballard’s story, the challenge of bringing a fertility doctor to justice who perpetrates such deceit, and what might motivate a doctor to do so in the place. As for Cline, he may have been religiously motivated. One podcast episode even lets listeners hear from Cline himself. As of 2023, Cline was still alive.
Don’t miss the 2020 season 1 update, An Appointment With Dr. Cline, addressing the Farber twins, born in the `70s and believed to be the first children born through Cline’s fraudulent insemination.
Seeds of Deceit — Doctor Jan Karbaat
And finally, there’s the 2021 mini-series Seeds of Deceit, about the Dutch fertility doctor Jan Karbaat, believed to have inseminated hundreds of women seeking IVF treatment without their consent. Karbaat’s fraud began in the 1980s and lasted through the early 2000s. By 2017, Karbaat’s children discovered what happened through DNA testing and contacted each other. Karbaat died that year as a lawsuit was brought against him, according to The Guardian.
And with that, we’ve covered the best documentaries, podcasts, and shows about doctors who inseminate their patients without their consent. With the growing popularity of DNA testing, however, surely more will come.
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