Source: khn.org<\/p>\n
When Heather Woock was in her late 20s, she started researching her family history. As part of the project, she spit into a tube and sent it to Ancestry, a consumer DNA testing service. Then, in 2017, she started getting messages about the results from people who said they could be half siblings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI immediately called my mom and said, \u2018Mom, is it possible that I have random siblings out there somewhere?’\u201d said Woock, of Indianapolis. She recalled her mom responded, \u201cNo, why? That\u2019s ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the messages continued, and some of them mentioned an Indianapolis fertility practice that she knew her mom had consulted when she had trouble conceiving.<\/p>\n
Woock researched and finally learned the truth. Dr. Donald Cline, the fertility doctor her mother saw in 1985, is her biological father.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went through an identity crisis,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t look in the mirror and think about, \u2018Where did my eyes come from? Where did my hair color come from?\u2019 I didn\u2019t even want to think about any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woock hadn\u2019t known that her mom had used artificial insemination to conceive her, and neither of them knew the doctor had used his own sperm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe now know Cline used his own sample and squirted it into my mom,\u201d Woock said.<\/p>\n
In the 1970s and \u201980s, Cline deceived dozens of patients and used his sperm to impregnate them. He has more than 60 biological children \u2014 and counting.<\/p>\n
For Woock, as the story of her parentage sunk in, it was distressing for another reason: She wanted to start her own family and was having trouble conceiving. And now she needed to turn to the fertility industry that had so badly betrayed her mom.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were doing all of the calendaring \u2026 everything that is out there to help you get pregnant, we were doing that,\u201d Woock recalled.<\/p>\n
But after six months, when she still wasn\u2019t pregnant at 32, she went to a fertility clinic for some tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had to fill out all this paperwork, and there\u2019s a slot that says kind of like, \u2018Is there anything else you\u2019d like to share?\u2019 \u201d Woock said.<\/p>\n
Yes, there most certainly was.<\/p>\n