'Let's just call it what it was': Chrissy Teigen says her miscarriage was actually an abortion

Chrissy Teigen revealed Thursday that the miscarriage she suffered two years ago was actually an abortion.

While speaking at the A Day of Unreasonable Conversation conference in Beverly Hills, Teigen said she only recently came to the realization. The conference seeks to help TV creators better understand and portray sensitive issues.

“Let’s just call it what it was: It was an abortion,” Teigen said, as reported by the Hollywood Reporter. “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 said her husband, John Legend, helped her process the event after they discussed the June decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Teigen had expressed sympathy for those that would have to make a decision about whether to have an abortion, then Legend pointed out that she had been one of those people.

“I fell silent, feeling weird that I hadn’t made sense of it that way. I told the world we had a miscarriage, the world agreed we had a miscarriage, all the headlines said it was a miscarriage," the 36-year-old model said. "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.”

In September 2020, Teigen took to social media to document the difficulties she endured during that pregnancy.

"We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” Teigen wrote on Instagram. “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.”

At Thursday's conference, Teigen mentioned how difficult a decision her 2020 procedure was.

“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," Teigen said. "It became very clear around halfway through that he would not survive, and that I wouldn’t either without any medical intervention.”

Teigen, who shares two children with Legend, announced in August that she is pregnant.

"[T]he last few years have been a blur of emotions to say the least, but joy has filled our home and hearts again,” Teigen wrote in an Instagram post. “1 billion shots later (in the leg lately, as u can see!) we have another on the way.”

Teigen also expressed fears about her current pregnancy after her previous traumatic experience.

“Every appointment I’ve said to myself, ‘ok if it’s healthy today I’ll announce’ but then I breathe a sigh of relief to hear a heartbeat and decide I’m just too nervous still,” she wrote.

“I don’t think I’ll ever walk out of an appointment with more excitement than nerves but so far, everything is perfect and beautiful and I’m feeling hopeful and amazing."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.