A woman sold as a “black market baby” by a rogue doctor has said she is determined to find her birth mother who was told she had died during labour.
Jane Blasio is the youngest of the so-called “Hicks babies” sold by Dr Thomas Hicks from his medical practice in McCaysville, Georgia, US, where he also performed abortions that were illegal at the time.
Dr Hicks sold more than 200 babies in the 1950s and 1960s and, in TLC’s Taken At Birth, Jane will try to reunite others like her with their birth parents.
Jane, now a private investigator, explains on the show: “I was a black market baby and I’ve been investigating Dr Hicks for my entire life.
(Image: TLC)
“How for nearly two decades, does a doctor get away with illegally selling hundreds of babies out of the back door of his clinic?”
It was Jane who uncovered the scandal in the 1990s after discovering her birth certificate did not match what she believed to be her birth date.
By then, Dr Hicks was long dead, having passed away from leukaemia in 1972 at age 83.
(Image: TLC)
He lost his medical license in 1964 after the authorities found out he had been performing abortions, which he allegedly charged $100 for, but he was never charged for a criminal offence.
Some of the Hicks babies feel that the doctor never paid for the chaos he unleashed on their lives by forging birth certificates and selling them to their adoptive parents.
Jane asks: “When exactly did dr Hicks sell that first baby on the black market?
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“What happened to the babies that didn’t make it out of the clinic?”
Jane still has a lot of questions and won’t stop her battle to reunite Hicks babies like herself with their biological relatives.
“Luckily today we have technology on our side, we have DNA,” she says.
Taken At Birth continues Sunday, 9pm on TLC, available to Sky customers on catch-up
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
