“And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.” —Malachi 4:6

Every child has a right to the truth about his origins. That simple principle is now codified in South Dakota, where lawmakers have enacted one of the clearest legal statements in the country affirming that biological identity matters to children.

The cases that prompted these reforms are disturbing. In one of the most notorious examples, Indiana fertility doctor Donald Cline secretly fathered dozens of children by substituting his own genetic material during procedures performed on unsuspecting patients. The story later became widely known through investigative reporting and the Netflix documentary Our Father.

Last week, House Bill 1164 made it a felony in South Dakota for a fertility physician to do this. The statute also creates a civil cause of action for those harmed by the practice. The legislation was passed unanimously in both chambers of the legislature, reflecting rare bipartisan agreement that such conduct violates the basic rights of the child created through it. According to one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Senator Amber Hulse, “With infertility on the rise and reproductive technology advancing rapidly, the law has to keep pace to protect the people most vulnerable to harm.”

Public reaction to such cases is typically focused on the outrage surrounding the deception of the parents. Couples sought medical assistance with certain expectations and received something entirely different. But the deeper harm falls on the child created through this deception.

For that child, the fraud committed is permanent.

A person conceived through this deception grows up believing one story about his origins while living another. They lose a “fundamental part of who they are.” Medical history becomes unreliable. Family relationships become uncertain. Increasingly, genetic testing can reveal dozens of previously unknown half-siblings created by the same perpetrator. In the case of one Indiana doctor, some individuals later discovered that the man who delivered them into the world was also their biological father.

Scholars and psychologists have described the experience as “genealogical bewilderment,” a term used to describe the profound confusion afflicting many people who lack true information about their biological origins. 

This harm is not merely emotional. Biological knowledge carries medical consequences. Family health histories inform everything from cancer screening to genetic disease risk. When a child’s origins are falsified, that knowledge disappears.

This deception strikes at one of the most basic questions of human identity: Who are my parents?

South Dakota’s law implicitly acknowledges that this question belongs first to the child. The substitution of biological parentage is treated as a felony precisely because a child’s origins are not interchangeable.

In this respect, the significance of House Bill 1164 goes beyond regulating a medical practice. It establishes a legal principle that modern policy has often struggled to make clear: children possess a legitimate interest in their biological identity.

Fourteen other states have enacted laws addressing fertility fraud, but South Dakota’s is distinctive for the clarity of its underlying rationale. The harm is not simply that adults purchasing a service were deceived. The harm is that the child’s biological identity was altered without his knowledge or consent.

That recognition carries broader implications for how the law understands parenthood.

Modern family policy increasingly treats parenthood as a legal status that can be reassigned through contract or statute. Assisted reproduction laws designate parents without a biological connection. Surrogacy agreements separate gestation from motherhood. In many jurisdictions, adult intentions rather than biological origin determine legal parenthood.

South Dakota’s law exposes the tension in this framework.

If it is a crime for a physician to secretly determine a child’s biological father because doing so violates the child’s right to his biological identity, a natural question follows: Why is the substitution any more acceptable if it is carried out through legal mechanisms as opposed to medical deception?

The legislature did not attempt to answer that question. It addressed the most egregious form of substitution: the physician who unilaterally determines a child’s origins. But the principle underlying the law points toward a larger truth.

Children are not abstract projects of adult desire. They come from mothers and fathers who are particular to each individual child, and those relationships carry meaning that law simply cannot redefine or will out of existence. 

For that reason, the passage of House Bill 1164 should be understood as the first step in a much longer march of securing children’s rights. It is the first step toward recognizing a deeper legal reality: a child’s mother and father are not optional features of his life.

Once that premise is acknowledged, even in the narrow context of fertility fraud, it begins to shape the entire structure of family policy. For centuries, marriage law existed in part to stabilize the relationship between the two people who brought a child into the world. The institution served not only adult companionship but also the interests of children in being raised by their own mother and father whenever possible.

Modern law has often drifted away from that understanding. Yet South Dakota’s statute quietly restores the starting point: biology matters to children.

The lesson is simple but increasingly important. A child’s biological identity is not a trivial detail that may be altered behind a laboratory door. It is a defining part of who a person is.

South Dakota has now written that truth into criminal law. And once the law begins to recognize children’s rights to their own origins, it becomes difficult to deny the broader implications that will and must follow.