Celebrity

Chrissy Teigen Reveals Her Miscarriage Was An Abortion That Saved Her Life

“I told you all we had a miscarriage because I thought that was what it was.”

by Radhika Menon
AUSTIN, TEXAS - MARCH 12: Chrissy Teigen speaks onstage at 'Examining The Way Down: God, Greed, and ...
Errich Petersen/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend are still mourning the loss of their son Jack, whom the couple believed they lost via a miscarriage in 2020 due to a pregnancy complication. But Teigen revealed at social impact agency Propper Daley’s “A Day of Unreasonable Conversation” summit on Sept. 15 that the loss can actually be attributed to an abortion — something that took her a long time to realize.

“Two years ago, when I was pregnant with Jack, John and my third child, I had to make a lot of difficult and heartbreaking decisions,’ she said at the conference. “It became very clear around halfway through that he would not survive, and that I wouldn’t either without any medical intervention.”

Teigen spoke at the conference with programming designed to unite creatives and entertainment executives with cultural changemakers about the choice to end her life-threatening pregnancy, speaking directly about the procedure. “Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion,” the model said. “An abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance. And to be honest, I never, ever put that together until, actually, a few months ago.”

It wasn’t until the Supreme Court decision earlier this summer to overturn Roe v. Wade, which previously protected the constitutional right to an abortion, that Teigen realized she had been a beneficiary of the law. She was discussing the empathy she felt for people who had to make these impossible, emotional decisions when Legend gently reminded her that that’s exactly what they had done with her pregnancy. “I fell silent, feeling weird that I hadn’t made sense of it that way,” Teigen confessed. “I told the world we had a miscarriage, the world agreed we had a miscarriage, all the headlines said it was a miscarriage. And I became really frustrated that I didn’t, in the first place, say what it was, and I felt silly that it had taken me over a year to actually understand that we had had an abortion.”

The Cravings author also took to social media to share her story, saying: “I told you all we had a miscarriage because I thought that was what it was. But it was an abortion, and we were heartbroken and grateful all at once. It just took me over a year to realize it.”

Teigen and Legend recently announced that they are expecting another child after a successful round of IVF despite previously indicating that they wouldn’t be trying for another. The two already share two kids, Luna, 6, and Miles, 4, and recently celebrated their ninth anniversary for which Legend wrote a song “Wonder Woman.”