Last year, the Washington Post featured the story of Billy and Brooke High, teenagers who got pregnant unexpectedly, and who were unable to have an abortion due to Texas’ pro-life laws. Brooke had originally intended to get an abortion, only to find out that she was actually 12 weeks pregnant with twins. At first, she planned to travel to New Mexico, but once she heard her babies’ heartbeats, she changed her mind. The couple got married, and Billy joined the Air Force.
A year later, the Washington Post has revisited their story, painting a grim picture of a struggling marriage with both parents exhausted and overwhelmed, and — as portrayed by the Post — a near impossibility for them to pursue their own needs, further education, date nights, or time for themselves.
The Post makes sure to portray Brooke and Billy as if sometimes they regret choosing life for their twins, despite the fact that they cannot imagine having ended their lives in abortion.
Roe v. Wade
Post reporter Caroline Kitchener discussed with the Highs their feelings about Roe v. Wade being overturned:
“If I see it on the news, I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s why I have two kids today,’” Billy said. “I think that for like a split second, then I move on.”
“Me too,” Brooke said. “I don’t really dwell on it.”
“If you’re not planning on having a kid,” Billy said, “abortion is much cheaper than raising people.” The new laws, he added, “create not a good situation to be in.”
But then he thought about Kendall and Olivia, and shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m tired.”
Kitchener further added that Brooke “feels sick” about all the women “forced” to carry children they hadn’t planned for.
“If I would have had the abortion… I can’t even think of it that way now. Those are our babies, and they’re people,” Brooke said (emphasis added), adding, “If you really didn’t want something, and then you’re forced to go through with it … it’s still really very hard.”
Brooke seems despondent because of her struggle as a young married parents, saying she can’t understand why the pro-life movement points to them as a success. “It doesn’t make sense to me that we would be that shining example,” she said, explaining that their lives are “so imperfect.”
But a life doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthwhile; Brooke and Billy are raising toddler twins. It’s normal, and expected, for them to be struggling. It doesn’t mean they aren’t doing a good job, but that’s the scenario Kitchener clearly wants people to take from her story: that this couple should not have been parents, they can barely handle it, their lives are falling apart, and it’s all due to pro-life laws.
Meanwhile, despite the grim picture Kitchener paints of their life, Billy is already floating the idea of having another baby.
Resources available
Kitchener focused strongly on the struggles Brooke has faced as a young mother, raising twins full-time at home, while her husband works at night. “Her life quickly started to feel like an endless cycle of tasks, entirely predictable and stretching out into infinity,” Kitchener wrote. “Cook lunch. Clean up. Play with the girls. Put the girls down for a nap. Change diapers. Cook dinner. Clean up. Repeat.”
This is, frankly, what normal parenting of young children looks like, no matter what your age as a parent. Very young children — especially — require time and care. As children grow and gradually gain independence, parents are able to find their rhythm in daily tasks and adapt to life while caring for the needs of their children.
Brooke has reportedly considered going back to school, but finds it impossible at this time with young twins at home, and daycare was said to be too expensive. Kitchener also claimed the Brooke struggled to find friends, as she knew to “expect judgment” everywhere she went because she is a young parent. Getting her own career in order is described as overwhelming and near impossible — but nowhere were the myriad resources available to families in the military mentioned.
Fitness centers on base, for example — including the base in which the High family seems to be stationed — include free child care, giving parents the opportunity to take a break and do something for themselves. The Military and Family Readiness program on base includes numerous options to help families, including employment assistance. There is child care available on base, typically at rates much more affordable than those off base, and they offer a program offering free child care twice a month to give parents a break. There are also education opportunities for military spouses, including financial aid and scholarships. Military OneSource is another resource offered for service members and their families, to help them navigate the number of resources and programs available.
None of this is acknowledged or mentioned by Kitchener, who seems more intent on portraying Brooke and Billy’s life together as having been ruined by their children, with no opportunity for relief, aid, or respite.
Turnaway Study
Kitchener cited the Turnaway Study, a favorite choice for abortion advocates to claim a lack of abortion ruins women’s lives. “At the center of the abortion debate is the question of how an unwanted pregnancy, carried to term, reverberates through the lives of those directly involved,” Kitchener wrote. “The most prominent study on the subject, conducted by a pro-abortion-rights research group at the University of California at San Francisco, included interviews with nearly 1,000 women over the course of eight years. The study, which was published as a book in 2020, found that women who are denied abortions experience worse financial, health and family outcomes than those who are able to end their pregnancies.”
However, there are major issues with this deceptive study and its conclusions. Watch below:
Kitchener failed point out how the Turnaway Study has been thoroughly debunked, but at least acknowledged that the group behind the study — Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) — is openly pro-abortion, and that the study itself was biased from the beginning. The author of the study, Daniel Grossman, is an abortionist himself who previously was a board member of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Abortion Federation; he is currently serving on California’s Future of Abortion Council. The organizations which funded the study all invest in Danco Laboratories, which manufactures the abortion pill.
The 877 women asked to participate were hand-picked by abortion facilities across the country, and a quarter of the women turned away had an abortion in another state. And, of the women hand-picked by the abortion industry, only 27% agreed to participate. By the final year of the study, only 17% of the women remained. The women the least likely to participate were the women who had negative abortion experiences. So how could the Turnaway Study truly claim to show how women feel about being denied an abortion, when so many of the women involved dropped out?
Kitchener claimed that Brooke’s future is “uncertain” and that though she and Billy are “permanently linked” now, without the babies, they would not be married.
Yet Kitchener does not acknowledge that virtually every teenager’s future could be described as “uncertain,” with or without children, and the picture she paints is clear: the Turnaway Study is right, and women like Brooke who don’t get abortions are merely doomed to live unhappy, stress-filled lives filled with misery and uncertainty.
At its heart, Kitchener’s Post piece is — once again — an exploitative work meant to promote abortion, and all at the expense of a young family.
