'Baby God': Did Fortier's adopted daughters slam him for his actions? HBO docu reveals they defend him even now
HBO's documentary 'Baby God' offers a unique insight into the life of Dr Quincy Fortier. The Nevada fertility specialist was once a respected personality in the field of gynecology, but the can of worms was due to open sooner or later. Dr Fortier was not just an intelligent medical practitioner who took risks in his line of work. His work actually has foundations in a power-hungry aspiration that validated his vicious methods.
'Baby God' is a story about a doctor who used his knowledge, expertise and position to exploit patients who visited him in need. When struggling couples approached him for artificial insemination, he provided them with his expert, topnotch advice. But what about women who didn't come to him for that? What about those who only went in for a check-up?
What about those women who found out they had actually birthed Fortier's children and not their partner's? What about those women who discovered this news decades later? As creator Hannah Olson digs deeper into Fortier's misconducts and personality, darker secrets are revealed, including a case of molesting his own sons and daughters.
As that may be, there is little evidence of why Fortier did what he did. Do the means justify the end? In Fortier's case, the answer is no. And while much of public opinion stood starkly against him, Dr Fortier had his fair share of allies, apecifically in his adopted daughters Nannette Fortier and Sonia Fortier.
In the HBO documentary, Nannette refuses to appear on screen but Sonia sits for testimonials in all earnestness for her father. When the then-93-year-old was making the rounds of the courthouse in the Mary Craddock lawsuit for $14 million, the documentary reveals that his daughters at the time did not think it was fair. Mary and Fortier eventually went for a settlement but was he really in the wrong? His daughters don't think so.
"He was an old man who had dedicated his life to helping people because he loved people. And to have one of his patients try to vilify him in the public light, it hurt him," Nannette's voice says over an old clip of them leaving the courthouse together. "If you love somebody, you can stand up for them. It's the very least I could do for my dad," she said.
Nannette and Sonia came into his life at a time when he was going through a divorce and facing the loss of his six other children. "He delivered us, took us home from the hospital and rest is history," Nannette recalls. He was 55 at the time.
Sonia Fortier walks down memory lane as she sings accolades of her late father. "He circumcised himself? How many men can do that?" She runs through old photographs, awards and certificates as she narrates his good deeds and philanthropy.
She recalls the time when he was so dedicated to his patients and his cause that he would see them at four in the morning and even moved his practice home. "Sometimes we would come from school and there would be patients in the living room and we had to practice [piano lessons] with an audience," Nannette says.
Would it be weird if your OB-GYN father treated you? Probably, but not for the Fortier sisters. "I was so grateful not only because he was such a phenomenal doctor but loved me too - can't ask for anything better."
When the interviewer straight-up asks her if she knew what about her father using his own semen, Nannette stiffens up. "I think that him using his own sperm, to him, was no different than using his own blood," she says and shrugs. "If there was a will and a way, then, there it goes," Sonia shrugs.
The 1 hour 18 minutes documentary 'Baby God' will be releasing on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, at 9 pm ET on HBO and HBO Max. On-demand, it will be available on Thursday, December 3, 2020.