Abby Hensel, Brittany Hensel and Josh Bowling. Heaidi Bowling/Facebook
Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel are not here for the criticism over their lives.
“This is a message to all the haters out here,” a deep voice said in a Friday, March 29, TikTok video, alongside photos of Abby and Brittany, both 32, with Abby’s husband, Josh Bowling. “If you don’t like what I do but watch everything I’m doing, you’re still a fan.”
The twins captioned their post, “#Forever.”
Several hours earlier, the twins uploaded a reel of several ancient sculptures of conjoined twins. “The internet is extra LOUD today,” Abby and Brittany captioned their post. “We have always been around.”
It was revealed earlier this month that Abby had secretly married Bowling two years prior in 2021. Social media trolls then flooded the internet with speculative questions about the nature of Abby’s marriage considering that she and her sister share organs.
Abby and Brittany’s story has been featured on TV since 1996. Nearly 10 years later in 2006, they shared their journey in the documentary Joined for Life and later chronicled their 16th birthday milestone in 2008. TLC also greenlit an Abby & Brittany docuseries in 2012.
The sisters are dicephalous conjoined twins, which is a rare form of partial twinning with two heads connected to one torso. Abby and Brittany share a bloodstream and all organs below the waist. Each twin also controls one arm and leg. (Abby is the left-side conjoined twin, while Brittany is the right.)
Josh Bowling, Abby Hensel, and Brittany Hensel. Courtesy of abbyandbrittanyhensel/TikTok
After the twins were born in 1990, their parents opted against a separation surgery after doctors had explained it was unlikely that both sisters would survive the procedure.
As Abby and Brittany grew up side-by-side, they pursued a career teaching elementary school students.
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“I remember one wanted to be a pilot and one wanted to be a dentist and that was short-lived,” their mom, Patti Hensel, said during an episode of the family’s reality show when the girls landed their jobs. “I think it’s going to go well for them because they’ve just always had a knack with kids and kids have always kind of been drawn to them.”
Patti added at the time, “Maybe it started by curiosity but once their simple questions are answered, they’re still just drawn to Ab and Britt for some reason.”
Abby and Brittany live and work in Minnesota, which is where Abby met military veteran Bowling. They privately wed in November 2021 and footage resurfaced earlier this month.