The award for the weirdest and most misleading headline of the year goes to a recent article in the Washington Post that announced, “An abortion ban made them teen parents.”  

The article tells the story of Billy and Brooke High and describes her pregnancy at age 18 as something that just “happened” because they were hanging out after meeting at a skate park. Brooke gave birth to twins soon after the Dobbs decision. She wanted an abortion but would have had to drive 13 hours to get one. Instead, she kept the babies and married their father.  

Because all of this is hard, the Washington Post implies, neither the children nor the marriage should have ever happened. Billy’s and Brooke’s perspective on the other hand is that day-to-day life is really hard. And being parents is growing them up, though they didn’t have great examples. 

What we can learn from the Post article is not where babies come from, but what young families need.