The Indiana woman who made a shocking discovery when she went on a quest to find out if she had any siblings conceived through artificial insemination is finally speaking out. Jacoba Ballard started searching for her siblings about two years ago with the knowledge that the sperm donor who contributed to her mother’s pregnancy was supposedly from a medical resident who would have been allowed to have been used for up to three successful pregnancies.
When Ballard took a DNA test however, what she found startled her.
“When I took the test I found seven siblings, so right then, we all kind of questioned what was wrong,” Ballard said, “We knew something was wrong because one, there was a seven year gap. A lot of people that aren’t even in the medical field know that a residency is three to four years, not seven. So what kind of residency is going to be seven years?”
With the help of some of her newfound siblings, Ballard began to investigate using various ancestry tests, which led right back to the fertility doctor, Dr. Donald Cline, who had helped their mothers conceive. Eventually, with more testing, they were able to determine that there was a 99.9 percent chance that the sperm had come from Dr. Cline himself.
Armed with the results, Ballard and a few of her siblings met with Cline to confront him, and Cline himself admitted that he had used his own sperm to impregnate over 50 patients. But instead of being apologetic, the fertility doctor actually went so far as to defend his actions.
“He was very cold, distant, really factual and he brought up a lot of bible verses trying to back up what he did,” she said, “I told him to put it away, to stop, don’t use God to make excuses for what you did. This has nothing to do with God, this is you. We all wake up every day and we have choices that we make in our life, and you can either choose to do right or choose to do wrong.”
Cline was charged with obstruction of justice, but whether or not he’ll see any jail time or lose his medical license is unclear. For her part, Ballard says that she wants to be an advocate for people in similar situations (although one would hope this exact thing hasn’t happened to too many other people). She says that she’s “going to take it and roll with it and try to help others.”
(Via WTHITV 10)