Yet another dreadful story unfolding in the news recently that approximately 200 babies adopted in the sixties and seventies were done so illegally. It was all the ruse of a local doctor, a Doctor Thomas J. Hicks, operating from his Hicks Clinic in Georgia USA, who amongst other things, performed illegal abortions. What he also did was to arrange for babies he declared dead at birth, delivered prematurely as they were, or ‘aborted’, then selling them to any takers for a thousand dollars a pop, no questions asked, out of the back door, quite literally.
It was only through the efforts of many of the adoptees, now adults, attempting to find their roots, that the extraordinary stories have come to light. Dr hicks died a while ago, but his name is the one on the birth certificates, so for many hoping to trace their identity, unfortunately, the buck stops at the clinic. Dr Hicks did very well out of the business of baby trafficking.
Often, he would persuade mothers to carry the baby to full term and then deliver and sell it. Other mothers have testified though that they were told the baby was dead, when in fact it wasn’t. They were left to deal with their own grief, falsely believing their baby had died during birth.
At one point he basically owned the High Street of the town, he was making so much tax-free cash. Locally though, he was a hero, providing a service to many unfortunate women who found themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, so it proved very hard to actually uncover the true story of what was going on.
The baby buyers tended to be from neighbouring states. They would turn up in their car, usually at night, pull in to the back door of the clinic and have a baby delivered to them, often still wet with fluid, to their car and drive off into the darkness.
Because it’s a lucrative business, it is open to abuse. Where there’s money, there’s trade. Too often, in any conversations concerning adoption, #adoptee voices are silenced, the only opinions pandered to those of prospective parents wanting a child, regardless of the cost to that child or the birthparents. What independent body is present to ensure, to guarantee, that any given baby is a true orphan?
Things gotta change.
