Taken at Birth
Stolen Babies, Hidden Lies, and My Journey to Finding Home
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About
Anxious women. Hopeful couples. And the doctor who took advantage of them all.
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 not only to discover her own origins but to 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.
"Jane takes you on the ride of her life, weaving, in emotional detail, the search for her birth family, the shocking circumstances surrounding her adoption, and the dark secrets as deep as the small southern town where it all began. Through thoughtful investigative work, she effortlessly puts the reader front and center as this real-life story of deceit, trauma, and ultimately redemption unfolds. Regardless of our start in life, Jane reminds us, we all have the ability to find humanity if we know where to look."--Lisa Joyner, host of Long Lost Family, Taken at Birth, and Find My Family; adoptee/adoptive mom
"In this gripping story that unfolds like a puzzle with no lid to provide the finished picture, Jane Blasio encounters numerous questions and too many missing pieces of information regarding her origins. Jane's search for answers, meaning, and belonging will take the reader to the darkest places in the human soul, ultimately unveiling the hardest truths to bear and then revealing the beauty found among the scattered pieces of the puzzle."--Anna LeBaron, author of The Polygamist's Daughter
"People like to say it takes a lot of courage to do a book like this: I think it takes a sight more than that. Jane Blasio lived a story that most of us could only imagine--from being sold as an infant by a small-town doctor to years of searching for her birth mother. A gut-wrenching ordeal. But she not only lived it, she wrote about it, bringing it all to life for the reader as it poured out of her. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that this was a life lived, not one just crafted."--Rick Bragg, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, journalist, and author of two bestselling memoirs, All Over but the Shoutin' and Ava's Man
Endorsements
"Jane takes you on the ride of her life, weaving, in emotional detail, the search for her birth family, the shocking circumstances surrounding her adoption, and the dark secrets as deep as the small southern town where it all began. Through thoughtful investigative work, she effortlessly puts the reader front and center as this real-life story of deceit, trauma, and ultimately redemption unfolds. Regardless of our start in life, Jane reminds us, we all have the ability to find humanity if we know where to look."
Lisa Joyner, host of Long Lost Family, Taken at Birth, and Find My Family; adoptee/adoptive mom
"In this gripping story that unfolds like a puzzle with no lid to provide the finished picture, Jane Blasio encounters numerous questions and too many missing pieces of information regarding her origins. Jane's search for answers, meaning, and belonging will take the reader to the darkest places in the human soul, ultimately unveiling the hardest truths to bear and then revealing the beauty found among the scattered pieces of the puzzle."
Anna LeBaron, author of The Polygamist's Daughter
"People like to say it takes a lot of courage to do a book like this: I think it takes a sight more than that. Jane Blasio lived a story that most of us could only imagine--from being sold as an infant by a small-town doctor to years of searching for her birth mother. A gut-wrenching ordeal. But she not only lived it, she wrote about it, bringing it all to life for the reader as it poured out of her. Sometimes you have to remind yourself that this was a life lived, not one just crafted."
Rick Bragg, professor of writing at University of Alabama