I know they can father children, but are there any cases of female conjoined twins getting pregnant and giving birth?
And is “siamese” twins considered offensive?
Depends on the type of cojoining -
Why wouldn’t they be able to? Unless their conjoining (or other conditions unrelated to their conjoining) affected their reproductive organs, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference for their fertility.
Now their ability to carry to term and deliver would also be impacted by their conjoined status, but I expect every conjoined twin set would be a unique situation vis a vis fertility.
There’s a case discussed on another page of that site astro linked to: Josepha and Rosa Blazik were joined at the hip (well, pelvis), but that didn’t stop Rosa from giving birth in 1900. Sadly, the courts would not allow her and her baby daddy to wed.
Here and here are stories of women with parasitic twins who married and had children. I guess they didn’t have the problem Rosa had, or rather, that Josepha had- what to do with yourself while your conjoined twin has a moment of intimancy with her lover.
I think that there will be few cases of a conjoined twin giving birth because these twins have such a high infant and child mortality rate. Even today, the world’s oldest unseparated pair are only in their early fifties. However, it does seem as if, over the years, male conjoined twins were more likely to marry than were female.
Yes, I don’t think the term “Siamese twins” is used anymore. It’s inaccurate. Chang and Eng Bunker were born in Siam; what does that have to do with any other pair of twins? Conjoined seems to be the preferred term.
I also read that both women were able to nurse the baby, and the weirdest thing about the pregnancy is that the one who was pregnant didn’t have morning sickness, but her twin did. :eek:
As for your information on parasitic twins, one was in the news a few years ago, decades after his death. His name was Frank Lentini, and he’s the man who had 3 legs; it was a partial twin that grew out of his lower back. Some kids started a rock band and named it “Kill Frank Lentini” :smack: and his grandchildren were (to put it mildly) not happy about this.
Lori and Reba Schappell, the women joined at the forehead, have discussed this very subject. Lori wanted to have a child but never did (although she’s had relationships with men) whereas Reba, who rides around on a wheeled stool, was described as having "spina bifida with incomplete development of the - " and then the program cut to her saying, “There are some things I would like to keep to me.”
Reba actually identifies as male and has changed his name to George. George actually performs as a country singer. That is an absolutely fascinating set of conjoined twins…
That’s really interesting! For once a zombie pays off. Back in the early 2000s I had a rather strange fascination with the subject of conjoined twins, even subscribed to a mailing list devoted to the subject, and saw a couple of documentaries that naturally included the Schappells. But at the time Reba (now George) was just described as a country singer, and didn’t appear to identify (or rather, was never said to identify) as male. This must be a relatively new development, or maybe he hadn’t made this public yet. Though ‘new development’ is probably the wrong term: now that I think of it, that was 13 years ago, holy crap, time flies.
Anyway, regarding the Blazek twins mentioned above by nearwildheaven and sugaree, there’s actually some controversy regarding whether Rosa was ever pregnant or gave birth at all. This page discusses the issues behind the controversy, which related to the fact that “Little Franz” just sort of appeared one day, and once the twins died, a post-mortem had no evidence of a pregnancy – and later, it was revealed that Franz had spent time in an orphanage, which may have been where he was “picked up” and added to the act to increase flagging interest.