Abby and Brittany Hensel conjoined twins sex life: So who gets to experience what and how does falling in love with new husband Josh Bowling actually work in real life?
America’s most famous conjoined twins are back in the news after it was revealed one of them had gotten married.
Abby Hensel – who shot to fame on a reality TV series with sister Brittany Hensel – quietly tied the knot with an army veteran in 2021.
But perhaps what has intrigued the public, along with day to day functions (the sisters work as elementary teachers at a Minnesota school and have learned over the years to co-ordinate their activities) is the siblings’ sex life with new husband, Josh Bowling, 33, and how the dicephalus conjoined twins might actually get to experience having sex.
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How do conjoined twins function?
In answering that question, a few basic understandings must be shared.
As dicephalus twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel, 34, have two heads and two hearts but share a single body from the waist down – including their genitals.
Conjoined twins occur when siblings have their skin or internal organs fused together, which affects around one in 200,000 live births.
It is caused by a fertilized egg beginning to split into two embryos a few weeks after conception, but the process stops before it is complete.
The most common type is twins joined at the chest or abdomen.
Doctors can only tell which organs the siblings share, and therefore plan surgery, after they are born. At least one twin survives 75 percent of the time. Just one set of twins in every 40,000 is born connected in some way to each other and only one per cent of those survive beyond the first year.
The Hensel girls are the rarest form of conjoined twins, the result of a single fertilized egg which failed to separate properly in the womb, resulting in dicephalic parapagus – where the twins have two heads and a single body with two arms and two legs.
So how do conjoined twins experience intimacy?
In a previous TIME interview, parents Patty and Mike were asked if they ever considered having the twins separated, only to respond they never gave it any serious thought because of the risk both sisters might die or be left with such severe disabilities their quality of life would be compromised.
Although Brittany – the left twin – can’t feel anything on the right side of the body and Abigail – the right twin – can’t feel anything on her left, instinctively their limbs move as if coordinated by one person, even when typing e-mails on the computer.
This means they are able to do most things a nonconjoined person can do, including driving and cooking, and they’ve also mastered things like playing the piano.
Growing up, they enjoyed sports such as bowling, volleyball, cycling, softball and swimming.
But how the pair handle intimacy is the question many are intrigued to know the answer to, especially as the co joined sisters share the bottom-half of their body.
So who gets to experience an orgasm?
Like most conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany have never publicly spoken about their sex life, despite immense public curiosity.
As the Hensel twins share one set of genitals, they would both feel any touching down there, wrote Alice Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, in The Atlantic.
As for whether both would experience an orgasm at the same time, we don’t know, she said.
Because there is significant variability of each twin’s ‘feeling’ in different body parts, it is ‘hard to guess how any conjoinment will turn out in practice,’ Professor Derger said.
Some have speculated that dicephalus twins would both experience a simultaneous orgasm, given that they share the same sexual organ, with the same nerves, muscles and blood vessels.
What about kissing? Will both sisters feel it if one is kissed?
Professor Dreger wrote: ‘The biology geek in me wants to answer that the happy hormones that come from a good kiss probably work their way to both brains.
What about having children and becoming mothers?
‘But the student of human nature in me says that when your sister gets kissed and you don’t, it’s quite possible that the unhappy hormones end up standing at the gate.’
Professor Dreger said that from her studies, she assumes conjoined twins likely have less sex than average people, not just because finding a partner is harder but because they may not need romantic partners to have sex with as much as everyone else does.
Over the years, she added, many twins have described their experience of being conjoined as like being attached to a soul mate, so they may feel less need for a romantic relationship with another person.
Another looming question is will the Hensel’s have children – a choice they must both make in tandem because they share one reproductive system?
There is no medical reason why they shouldn’t be able to have children, and they have in the past said they would like to start a family.
The sisters have two spines (which join at the pelvis), two hearts, two esophagi, two stomachs, three kidneys, two gall bladders, four lungs (two of which are joined), one liver, one ribcage, a shared circulatory system and partially shared nervous systems.
From the waist down, all organs, including the intestine, bladder and reproductive organs, are shared.
In a documentary filmed when the girls were teenagers, their mother said they were keen to have children of their own one day, explaining: ‘That is probably something that could work because those organs do work for them.’
‘Yeah, we’re going to be moms,’ Brittany agreed.
Abbey agreed saying: ‘Yeah, we are going to be mums one day, but we don’t want to talk about how it’s going to work yet.’
This means they can conceive a child in the conventional way, but it’s unclear who would legally be the child’s mother according to the Daily Mail.
In 2003, Abby and Brittany featured in a documentary titled Joined For Life in which mom, Patty confirmed her children were interested in becoming moms themselves one day.
‘That is probably something that could work because those organs do work for them,’ she said.
Brittany confirmed their hopes for the future at the time, saying: ‘Yeah, we’re going to be moms. We haven’t thought about how being moms is going to work yet.
‘But we’re just 16 — we don’t need to think about that right now.’
If and when the sisters become pregnant (which technically is possible) it will likely be a challenge who will legally the mother, nevertheless the twins will likely relish in the challenge and equally share in the task of being mothers as they have shared like most sisters in many tasks, except for the odd coincidence the siblings also happened to be co-joined and adamant that they too will also live a normal life.
