Conjoined Twin Abby Hensel Secretly Married in a Stunning Gown – People Worry about Brittany 'Being the 3rd Wheel'

Conjoined twins Brittany and Abby Hensel reached a major milestone in their lives. Abby is now married, and people expressed their concern and confusion over the development.

Sisters Abby and Brittany became instant celebrities in 1996 when their story was featured on “The Oprah Show.” Since then, their development was documented in a TLC reality series, but the latest big event in their lives took place quietly.

Abby Wed Low-Key

According to public records reportedly obtained by Today, Abby, now 34, wed Josh Bowling, a United States Army veteran and nurse, in 2021. The couple lives in Minnesota, where the conjoined sisters were born and now work as fifth-grade teachers.

Social media users weighed in on the news. Since conjoined twins are rare, some expressed their confusion as not much is known about how they navigate daily life.

People React to the News

“I’m pleased for her but I’m not sure how it works!” a Facebook user wrote.“What happens if the other sister wants to marry someone else..or if one wants to go out and the other one doesn’t,” asked another.

Some social media users tried to put themselves in that situation. “The other conjoined twin made a huge sacrifice,” one opined, with another adding, “It's a happy day for one but it had to be a sad day for the other. Nobody likes being the 3rd wheel. Hopefully, he is married to both technically.”

Having to separate bodies was never an option for them.

Attempts to clarify points raised also made their way into the comment section. “Okay so that means if one of them can feel the left-hand side and the other can feel the right-hand side then they both feel pleasure during intimacy,” one wrote.

A different comment focused more on other aspects of the situation, “I don't know if Britney will marry separately, but I doubt it because I remember one of them had said that if they were to get married, the husband would have to accept both of them..also, you can't marry 2 women ..it's our law to marry one wife in the USA, so he had to marry one.”

How They Are Conjoined

As one of the commenters noted, Abby and Brittany share many organs, including a bladder, liver, intestines, and reproductive tract.

They have distinct nervous systems, which results in each only feeling their half of tactile sensations, apart from shared sensation along a narrow strip on their back.

They share a bloodstream, and also mastered coordination since Brittany controls the left side of their body, and Abby the right. But they also have independently functioning systems - the sisters have separate urges for sleep and urination and also experience hunger separately.

However, having to separate bodies was never an option for them, as explained a few years after they were born.

Why Were They Not Separated?

After Brittany and Abby’s birth via cesarean section in 1990, doctors deemed it too risky to perform a separation surgery and said both would have little chance of survival if they went ahead with it.

The idea of picking the child they wanted to survive was unfathomable to their parents, Mike and Patty. Since the twins seemed healthy otherwise, they quickly dismissed going ahead with surgery Patty was sure would only result in “pain, multiple surgeries, and lives spent mostly in wheelchairs.”

The chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Maryland, Dr. Benjamin Carson, agreed with Patty and Mike’s decision not to try and surgically separate the sisters.

"If we were to separate them, we would basically take a couple of individuals who are mobile and change them into invalids," he said. The sisters don’t regret the decision made, as they shared how they feel about sharing a body.

How Do the Sisters Feel about Being Conjoined?

Brittany made her feelings clear in 2001 already, when she said, "I'm not going to be separated."

Only 11 years old at the time, their conduct and individual growth left those around them amazed.

By “obvious reasons,” they meant the rarity of their situation, which is indeed staggering.

"They do their own work," mused their teacher, Connie Stahlke. "When we take tests, they could copy each other so easily, but they don't. If Abby makes a mistake, Britty has that one right. It just amazes me."

Abby also wondered whether a husband would be in the cards one day; and now she knows for sure that her father was right when he said, "They're good-looking girls. They're witty. They've got everything going for them.”

Being conjoined twins, however, does come with the need to make sacrifices although they don’t see it as a limitation.

"When it comes to decisions, there are compromises we have to make," Abby reportedly said. "We take turns. We want to work it so each of us is happy and we find a happy medium."

"People have been curious about us since we were born, for obvious reasons," the twins explained. "But our parents never let us use that as an excuse. We were raised to believe we could do anything we wanted to do."

By “obvious reasons,” they meant the rarity of their situation, which is indeed staggering.

How Rare Are Conjoined Twins?

Worldwide, conjoined twins being born is a rare event, so rare that it only occurs in one in every 50,000 births. Of those births, 40% are stillborn, with 70% being female.

As the product of a single egg, conjoined twins are always identical, and occur when that single egg fails to properly separate during the first three weeks of pregnancy. Identical twins are 400 times more common than conjoined twins.

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