By Dave Andrusko
With all—or at least most—signs pointing to a pro-life outcome in Dobb v. Women’s Health Organization, most every news outlet is trying to outdo its competitors in painting the most relentlessly grim outcome for women.
That’s what I expected from “This Texas teen wanted an abortion. She now has twins: Brooke Alexander found out she was pregnant 48 hours before the Texas abortion ban took effect.”
And Caroline Kitchener account of 18-year-old Brook Alexander, the mother of three-month-old twins, tells us how difficult it is for her to manage. No rose-colored glasses.
When Brooke finally confronted what she had been denying, she went to her best friend’s house.
“She could always get an abortion, she told him. Then he reminded her of something she vaguely remembered seeing on Twitter: A new law was scheduled to take effect Sept. 1,” Kitchener writes.
“Brooke had 48 hours.”
She looked around and found a place “that would perform an ultrasound on short notice — and scheduled an appointment for 9 a.m.” It was The Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend.
She was living with Terri Thomas, her mom; at the time and there was no resistance to the abortion from Thomas. She went to the Pregnancy Center together. There was no hiding what they were doin, contrary to what you read.
The advocate assigned to her case, Angie Arnholt,
ushered Brooke into the ultrasound room, where Brooke undressed from the waist down and lay back onto an examination table, looking up at a large flat-screen TV.
As the ultrasound technician pressed the probe into her stomach, slathered with gel, Brooke willed the screen to show a fetus without a heartbeat.
The technician gasped.
It was twins. And they were 12 weeks along.
“Are you sure?” Brooke said.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Thomas recalled saying as she jumped up and down. “This is a miracle from the Lord. We are having these babies.”
Brooke felt like she was floating above herself, watching the scene below. Her mom was calling the twins “my babies,” promising Brooke she would take care of everything, as the ultrasound technician told her how much she loved being a twin.
If she really tried, Brooke thought she could make it to New Mexico [to get an abortion]. Her older brother would probably lend her the money to get there. But she couldn’t stop staring at the pulsing yellow line on the ultrasound screen.
She wondered: If her babies had heartbeats, as these women said they did, was aborting them murder?
Eventually, Arnholt turned to Brooke and asked whether she’d be keeping them.
Brooke heard herself saying “yes.”
There were (and are, it is safe to assume) trials and tribulations. Her mother had always been erratic, Brooke’s relationship with Billy–her boyfriend, soon to be her husband–shaky. Again Kitchener’s story has ups and downs.
But she ends with this powerful testimony:
If it wasn’t for the Texas law, Brooke knew she might not be standing here. She’d probably be studying for her next exam, while Billy mastered some new trick on the quarter-pipe. She liked to think they’d still be together — spending their money on movie tickets and Whataburger, instead of diapers and baby wipes.
She told herself that alternate life didn’t matter anymore. She had two babies she loved more than anything else in the world.
“I do,” she said, tears in her eyes.
Brooke pulled out her phone once they finished the ceremony: 1 hour, 15 minutes.
Time to grab some lunch and head home; the babies would be hungry.