Two women found out they were accidentally switched at birth in 1964. One woman decided to look up her ancestry through an Ancestry.com DNA test. She discovered her grandfather could not have been her grandfather since the DNA didn’t match. Now, both women are suing an Oklahoma hospital for the mix-up.
According to The Daily Beast, Tina Ennis and Jill Lopez were both born on May 18, 1964, at Duncan Physicians and Surgeons Hospital when hospital employees handed the infants off to each other’s biological parents.
Ennis discovered she was not related to the rest of her family in 2019 when she and her 26-year-old daughter took an at-home DNA test to track down her grandfather.
When the results of the DNA test were filled with names Ennis did not recognize, her daughter became convinced that Ennis was switched at birth. She tracked down a local woman, Jill Lopez, who was born on the same day as Ennis.
According to The Daily Beast, the hospital has denied the allegations, claiming it is not the same entity where the two were allegedly switched after it merged with other local hospitals in 1975.
While Kathryn Jones was able to meet her biological daughter, Ennis’s biological parents both passed away. For Jones, realizing that Ennis’ children were not her biological grandchildren was a nightmare.
“I felt like I was losing my daughter and my grandchildren too,” she said.
In the last three years, the women have spent Christmases together, but are still trying to figure it all out.
“From the outside, we all probably look pretty good,” Ennis said. “But in my opinion, it has not been something I would wish on anyone.”
In 1998, The Baltimore Sun reported that about 28,000 babies get switched in hospitals each year. Today, hospitals have technology measures in place to prevent babies from being switched, such as matching ID bracelets.
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