Taken at Birth: Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home

Written by Jane Blasio

Narrated by Jane Blasio and Lisa Larsen

From the 1940s through the 1960s, young pregnant women entered the front door of a clinic in a small North Georgia town. Sometimes their babies exited out the back, sold to northern couples who were desperate to hold a newborn in their arms. But these weren't adoptions-they were transactions. And one unethical doctor was exploiting other people's tragedies.

Jane Blasio was one of those babies. At six, she learned she was adopted. At fourteen, she first saw her birth certificate, which led her to begin piecing together details of her past. Jane undertook a decades-long personal investigation to not only discover her own origins but identify and reunite other victims of the Hicks Clinic human trafficking scheme. Along the way she became an expert in illicit adoptions, serving as an investigator and telling her story on every major news network.

Taken at Birth is the remarkable account of her tireless quest for truth, justice, and resolution. Perfect for book clubs, as well as those interested in inspirational stories of adoption, human trafficking, and true crime.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ChristianAudio.com
• Release date: Aug 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781545917961

Reviews for Taken at Birth

[kathy bickel · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was very hard to follow meeting all these random people. Listening on audio probably makes it harder than actually seeing the peoples names in print

[Joy Truax · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Such a heartbreaking story about devastating events and yet it was told so well. The author draws you right in to her life and shows such a true character of forgiveness.

[Monica M Cederstrom · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Truly an amazing journey. Thank you for sharing in your very personal experience and in your life. This has been a learning experience for me. I could not pause this for a moment. I needed to know what was in the next chapter and how it ended. I now know that this is not ended, because there are so many stories like yours and those in this book that can not be told and have disappeared with time. But your story gives me a glimpse and insight into all that went on in that little town and so many more across the country. Prayers are with all those seeking. Thank you.

[Jessica Howell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thank you for sharing your story. I am also an adopted child. I have an unknown story, and listening to yours has given me strength to start my search.

[chirikosan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I saw this book announced in a Yahoo news article which was quite well-written and intrigued me so much that I preordered it immediately. When I read the article, I presumed it was a trad published book from a Big 4 publishing house. Since when do major news outlets give free advertising to indie books?

I think this has been the very first time this has ever happened outside of brief mini articles applauding Sci-Fi bestseller indie novels that obtained trad deals like Wool or The Martian. From the nice cover of the book, the article managed to fool me very well.

Notice I have never watched the TLC documentary series but I do remember cable tv announcing commercials for it. This is the very first time I have ever heard of the Hicks clinic so I was entering the book with a completely open mind.

In a way, I feel torn about the book. On one hand, I applaud the author for sharing such a personal and difficult journey, alongside getting permission from other Hicks Clinic babies/birth mothers as they became known over the years to share their stories. It seems so unsettling to read the depravity of domestic abuse suffered from women as recently as 40 years ago and the huge strides women rights have advanced. This makes it hard to put myself in the shoes of the teenage birth mothers that gave up their babies without the proper legal paperwork or far more ominous, the social acceptance of violence against young men such as Charlie just because he was dating a young woman he liked by jealous villagers. Far worse, I also found it utterly reprehensible how patients that suffered blatant malpractice from Dr. Hicks didn't engage in a large scale lawsuit. The book hints there was a lot of corruption at the time but never really delves into what happened to him at the end other than he died in the early 1970's from leukemia.

While I enjoyed the author's voice and how she pours her difficult life story for all to see, this book was like a diamond in the rough so to speak. If she had hired a really good editor that specialized in crime memoirs to organize the chapters a whole deal better and close the haphazard loose ends, this book would have been really awesome.

As such, it feels sort of anticlimactic when we finally discover Jane locates the paternal side of her family after she gets a home DNA test just a few years ago, but we never find out if she located her potential mother or the whereabouts of Kittie's lost children. Dr. Hicks ends up facing a jury probably due to malpractice but the book doesn't even mention if he was declared guilty and served any time or only lost his license. We don't even find out if the clinic is still abandoned today or the locked office in the downtown residence owned by Dr. Hicks had anything useful such as medical records.

One thing that stroke me very odd about the book is that Jane has worked for the FBI according to the introduction, and while it would make sense she made a lot of rookie mistakes at first during her search, the fact she didn't have access to DNA tests that would have helped her discover the existence of her lost sibling a lot sooner seems odd. As a full-fledged FBI agent, the author would have been able to get a search warrant to visit Dr. Hick's office to search for incriminating evidence. If not just to locate babies that were illegally sold, to discover if the rumors are true he buried deceased babies somewhere and uncover them.

I also wondered if any of the Hicks babies suffered from horrible legal cases that afflict approximately 19,000 adopted Americans today where they are rendered legally stateless because there is no true proof the babies were even born in US soil in the first place because the birth certificates are forgeries. A lot of international adopted babies in the 60's and 70's entered the US with a birth certificate but no other solid proof of relinquishment of paternity from their birth mothers. It wasn't until after 9/11 when the US started to demand passports for American citizens to enter the country from both land borders. It would make a lot of sense at least one of these Hicks clinic babies would get tangled into a huge legal nightmare the instant they tried to get a US passport to travel abroad or vote in US elections. They might have even managed to get a passport and have a baby with a non US citizen abroad assuming their child obtained automatic US citizenship, only to discover consular officials deny their petition and they start a tedious legal battle to get a Green Card. I would have felt very curious to know if any of the Hick's Clinic babies suffered from this particular legal problem and the outcome.

If the book had been trad published, I would have been a lot harsher in my review because trad publishing houses would have hired a large set of eyes and an experienced ghost writer to polish the prose to fill out every loose end. As it is, despite being an imperfect book, I did enjoy reading it very much and learn more about such a dark chapter of US history that should not be forgotten.

3 1/2 stars!