Chrissy Teigen Recently Came To Terms With The Fact That She Had An Abortion
“An abortion to save my life for a baby that had absolutely no chance," the model said of her late son Jack, whom she lost at 20 weeks in Sept. 2020.
Chrissy Teigen and John Legend experienced an unimaginable loss when their third child, a son they named Jack, died at 20 weeks following pregnancy complications in Sept. 2020. At the time, the couple announced they had a miscarriage, but Teigen recently came to the realization that it was, in fact, an abortion.
Speaking during a talk called “We Made That Choice” at social impact agency Propper Daley’s “A Day of Unreasonable Conversation” summit on Thursday, the model, 36, recalled Jack’s story, saying, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “I had to make a lot of difficult and heartbreaking decisions. It became very clear around halfway through [the pregnancy] that he would not survive, and that I wouldn’t either without any medical intervention.”
Teigen, who is currently pregnant and also shares daughter Luna, 6, and son Miles, 4, with Legend, went on to explain that although they had the support of family, friends and the public following their loss, it was clear that what they experienced was not a miscarriage, despite presenting it that way.
“Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion,” Teigen 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.”
Teigen revealed it wasn’t until the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this summer that she came to terms with the whole situation. She expressed to Legend that she felt sympathy toward people who have to make the painful decision to have an abortion under certain circumstances when her husband reminded her that she actually was one of those individuals.
“I fell silent, feeling weird that I hadn’t made sense of it that way,” Teigen shared during the conversation. “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.”
Teigen shared news of her pregnancy loss on Instagram on Sept. 30, 2020, writing, in part, “We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before. We were never able to stop the bleeding and give our baby the fluids he needed, despite bags and bags of blood transfusions. It just wasn’t enough... Jack worked so hard to be a part of our little family, and he will be, forever...”
In the two years since her abortion, Teigen has tried to focus on her mental and physical health, admitting that Jack’s death was a “transformative” moment for her. She also recently celebrated one year of sobriety.
“In a way, [Jack’s loss] really saved me, because I don’t think that I would’ve discovered therapy and then sobriety and this path of feeling good about myself and feeling like a new person,” she told Ellen DeGeneres in Feb. 2021.
So many are, no doubt, thankful for her candidness in sharing her story.
