The Washington Post tells another pro-life story about sacrifice and love
Briana Oser
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In a “deep read” published Tuesday by the Washington Post, abortion author Caroline Kitchener gives unexpectant parents yet another reason to have hope and have kids. Her new piece about teen parents Brooke and Billy (the second one she has written on the same couple) leaves out no detail of their trials, but it also enforces a shockingly pro-life message: Children are worth the sacrifice, and desperate situations improve with commitment and love.
The piece, questionably titled “An abortion ban made them teen parents,” explores the family life of 19-year-old Brooke and Billy two years after a Texas abortion ban stopped them from ending the lives of their twin girls in the womb.
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Kitchener’s original piece on the family was a hopeful tale about the teen couple’s resolve to rise to the occasion. After deciding to keep her twins, Brooke dropped out of real estate school. Billy soon followed suit, ditching his teen life of leisure and skateboarding to enter the Air Force full time. The ending illustrated a beautiful picture of sacrifice: Brooke just married Billy, and she finds herself dwelling on the “what-ifs” of life without her children. She quickly dismissed these thoughts and concluded: “She had two babies she loved more than anything else in the world.”
The piece caught the attention of a pro-life audience. As Kitchener notes, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) posted about it on Twitter, calling it a “powerfully pro-life story.”
This is because, despite Brooke and Billy’s challenges, they pulled through for their girls. Especially at their age, the action is praiseworthy. They are succeeding.
The pro-choice readers of the story did not share the same sentiment.
The comments under both stories rail on Brooke and Billy for their “immaturity,” many calling them “miserable” and their situation “hopeless.”
A few commenters commended them for their dedication to making the situation work. Those remarks were met with immediate backlash about Brooke “overromanticizing” parenting and the doomed fate of her relationship with Billy.
This rhetoric does not seem at all consistent with the pro-choice “logic” of supporting any decision a woman makes about her pregnancy.
Despite the skeptics, Brooke and Billy are making it work.
The new story takes place one year after the first. Billy is still in the Air Force full time, and Brooke is teaching her two-year-old babies to swim. The couple spends most of their time apart. They are struggling in their marriage, but they have hired a counselor. Brooke is dealing with societal shame. But despite numerous challenges and doubts, they have hope.
Brooke told Kitchener that she cannot sympathize with her story’s pro-life interpretations because her life is so imperfect.
What Brooke does not understand is that there is no way to fully prepare to be a parent. It is always going to be imperfect, no matter your circumstances. Having children is an experience that thrusts you out of control. You might have to sacrifice your afternoon to take a kid to the hospital. Your infant might start screaming on the airplane, to the dismay of passengers. You never know what a child might do.
Even financial stability is never guaranteed. A solidly middle-class family may have a child with an illness who needs constant support. Different children have different needs.
Parenting is full of failures, and it is full of uncertainties. In the end, it takes commitment to succeed. Kitchener explains how Billy applied his skateboarding mentality, “Commit or go home,” to his family. This may not be as naive as the pro-choice readers of the Washington Post think.
Brooke and Billy are impressive to pro-lifers because regardless of their incredible hardships, they chose to persevere. Here is a snippet from the piece, in which Brooke sums up the story’s discretely pro-life message: “‘If I would have had the abortion…’ She stopped. ‘I can’t even think of it that way now. Those are our babies, and they’re people.’”
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Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.