Abby and Brittany Hensel, who documented their lives in the TLC reality series “Abby & Brittany,” have a new member of the family.
Abby and Brittany Hensel, who documented their lives in the TLC reality series “Abby & Brittany,” have a new member of the family.
Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel first gained national attention when they appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1996.
Now the sisters have reached a major life milestone: Abby is married.
The Hensels later starred in the feel-good TLC reality series “Abby and Brittany,” which showed them driving, traveling to Europe and even riding a moped. When the show ended after one season, Abby and Brittany had just graduated from college with degrees in education.
A lot has happened in the last decade. Abby, 34, is now married. According to public records, Abby, a teacher, and Josh Bowling, a nurse and United States Army veteran, tied the knot in 2021. The sisters also shared photos of the wedding on social media. The couple live in Minnesota, where the Hensels were born and raised.
All joke aside these girls are bad ass I could not imagine being in their situation. I remember them dating different people for a while which would have been interesting for everyone…. Glad they figured it out with a life partner
They have found all sorts of coping strategies throughout their lives to assert their individuality, so Brittany would probably say no, she was not married to him and Abby would agree, because he married Abby and they are two different people.
I'm really curious about some details. They both meet this guy. He seems interested. Does he just keep talking to one face and ignoring the other? Were he and Abby kissing, and Brittany's all "Ew, Abby, he's gross". When he proposed, was he like "Will you marry me?" And they both say "yes", and he's like "Uh, I just meant the left side"? How do you not end up dating and marrying them both?! Maybe they are in reality, but they can't say that due to polygamy laws?
That's my suspicion. They obviously can't legally have a plural marriage. But then again they could have such a ceremony but only one of the girls' names on the paperwork.
I mean they don't have options for a legal poly marriage or some harem multi-wife practice, and they are registered as two persons in one body, I believe. In reality, yes, he can't marry just one. A weird situation law-wise.
People are getting so hung up on the sex angle, but the ramifications are more interesting. What if one of them wants to get pregnant but the other doesn't? One consents to go through labor and delivery but the other doesn't?
This is all incredibly complex, but you know if Chang and Eng could make it work...
"They lived together in one house for nine years, but their wives began to quarrel. Starting in 1852, Sarah and Adelaide lived in separate houses. Chang and Eng agreed to reside in one house for three days, in which that brother made all the decisions without question. They spent the next three days at the other twin’s house, where he made all the decisions. The Bunkers faithfully held to this arrangement the rest of their lives.
The twins returned to touring between 1849 and 1870 to support their large families. Chang and Adelaide had ten children, and Eng and Sarah had eleven children."
Everything I've read or seen about them shows that they unsurprisingly have a lot of ways of coping with each other when they disagree, even when it is a major disagreement. What's interesting is that they use "I" as a single entity when they agree and consider each other separate entities when they don't.
I don't know what both think about pregnancy, but they're school teachers, so they definitely like kids. I wonder if pregnancy is even a possibility? Or maybe unwise if their condition is genetic.
The closest anyone says is that they share a single set of reproductive organs and are a single entity "below the waist".
Any obstetrician worth their degree would probably consider it a high risk pregnancy due to all the unknown factors. How would an epidural work, for example? No clue. Pregnancy is a stressful event under normal circumstances, no clue what would happen here.
In the Chang and Eng case, the twins were brothers who impregnated separate sisters, so the pregancies themselves were normal (despite being 21 or 22 of them).
I know, right? Conjoined twins in then Siam (Thailand), essentially sold into slavery, smuggled out of the country, then established as slave owners themselves... and having 21 children between them...
They've had really interesting lives, especially in the way they have fiercely asserted their independence. I highly recommend reading more about them.
I'd imagine most are a lot more minor than this. Baby is born with a small growth that turns out to be a malformed limb of an incomplete/reabsorbed twin, doctors remove it quickly after birth, and the baby goes on to live a normal life.
I've heard of there being chimera people as well who go through most of their life assuming they're perfectly normal until they learn that their DNA in one part of their body doesn't match their DNA in another part of their body.
“Hi everyone and thanks again for coming to the wedding. Firstly, I would like to introduce for the first time my better half Abby”. The reception room falls awkwardly silent for a moment until punctuated by the laughter of a very tipsy uncle Ron from right at the back.
I'm sure Abby wouldn't have done it if Brittany wasn't on board. They all have to live together after all.
I want to know how it works if Brittany starts seeing another guy now.
Also, if they have one set of reproductive organs, who's the mother? I assume they have separate DNA so they should be able to test that, right? Do the eggs by DNA belong to one of them, or is it a mix?
Well, they will always have someone who can weigh in as a final decision when they both disagree on something. Sadly, I think it will be a bit one-sided.
I do wonder how insurance works for them too, are they treated like two individuals or do they get the benefit of having a single body and are treated as an individual?
I wonder how birth is going to work. Both of them gonna scream during labour?
Both of them are basically the same person genetically so the child has two moms genetically speaking? i guess not different from any child born to identical twin mom.
Obviously they would both feel labor pain. The interesting part is the hypotheticals that they would plan around. What if they both wanted to get pregnant at the same time? Would they just decide who the mom is based on who the dad is?