Model and TV personality Chrissy Teigen recently met with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss a tour she took of an Atlanta abortion facility. There, Teigen — along with Amanda Zurawski (whose horror story of medical neglect has been turned into abortion activism) and reality stars Dr. Jackie Walters, Dr. Simone Whitmore, and Dr. Heavenly Kimes — discussed how they believe having an abortion can be a positive experience.
Did Teigen have an abortion?
Teigen spoke about her so-called abortion during the discussion, the video of which was shared on Instagram by Harris. “You know, in saying that people are not alone… I think what’s really important with reproductive rights and reproductive justice in this whole topic is being able to be storytellers,” Teigen began. “For those of you that don’t know, I finally got naturally pregnant. So all these little beautiful babies that are here in this front row today came about by IVF. But I found myself pregnant naturally for the first time. I didn’t think it could happen for me, so we were very excited. We learned that we were having a baby boy. And about, you know, I started having complications pretty early on, and things turned bad very quickly. I remember feeling so lucky that I had the care that I had, and the ability to make decisions with my doctor. We ended up, you know, having an abortion. And I think that word is so scary to people. It’s so taboo to talk about.”
The problem is, this description — “abortion” — is markedly different from her original description of what happened.
When Teigen and her husband, singer John Legend, lost their son, Jack, they bravely shared the experience with the public. In a series of heartbreaking black-and-white photos, Teigen was seen crying in her hospital bed, receiving what appears to be an epidural, and holding baby Jack as she cried. She explained that even before Jack’s death, she was having complications due to problems with her placenta. She said that, despite the best efforts of doctors to save Jack’s life, they were unable to.
“We are shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about, the kind of pain we’ve never felt before,” she wrote at the time. “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.”
Two years later, after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturned Roe v. Wade, Teigen suddenly began to claim that she had an abortion.
During the roundtable with Harris, she said it was Legend who made her “realize” she had not merely experienced a miscarriage, but that she had undergone an abortion.
“I was talking about it from a place of, ‘I feel so bad for … anyone who’s ever had to go through that, and they’re not able to make a choice of their own body,’ and he was like, ‘Well, you had an abortion,’” she said. “I was like, what? I had no idea … I just assumed that I had miscarried.”
She doubled down on this argument in a statement to ELLE.
“I could have spent the rest of my life thinking that I just naturally miscarried or something,” she said. “I felt like if I, with such wonderful doctors and such wonderful teams around me, didn’t know that I had one, how many other women are out there that don’t know enough about their own bodies or their own health care system to understand that this can happen to anybody, and that restricting rights and restricting access to abortions is strictly about punishing the woman? And the more I started speaking out about it, of course, the more opposition I saw. I started realizing that this was going to be a real fight. And I’m always down for a fight.”
Of course, this is patently false; Teigen did not have an abortion. An induced abortion is committed with the specific goal of causing the death of a preborn child. As Teigen pointed out herself, doctors did everything they could to save Jack’s life. Neither Teigen, Legend, nor their doctors did anything to intentionally cause Jack to die.
Teigen didn’t have an abortion. And while we don’t know what specific procedure she underwent after Jack passed away, it would have been legal in every single state.
Is abortion ever “exciting?”
Oddly, Teigen made another statement during her appearance that quickly raised eyebrows. In it, she addressed Dr. Zoë Lucier-Julian, whose facility — Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta — she toured.
“Hearing stories from your clinic, hearing that so many women come in there, and it’s not a place of sadness all the time,” Teigen said. “It’s not a place where people are feeling at their darkest points or anything like the world wants you to think. Some people go in there with so much hope, and so much — sorry — so much excitement because they know that they have a future.”
“People go [into abortion clinics] with so much excitement.”
No, Chrissy Teigen, abortion facilities aren’t places of “excitement,” they’re places that poison and dismember children limb from limb in their mother’s womb. pic.twitter.com/FQjD02TiCe
— Anna Lulis (@annamlulis) June 23, 2024
This is a sad misunderstanding at absolute best.
Yes, some women may be in abortion facilities thinking the death of their preborn child means they will have a future. But that is because women are experiencing pregnancies in an inherently misogynistic culture which makes them feel that their only choice is abortion, because they were abandoned by a partner or by family, or they fear they will lose their jobs, their college scholarships, or their homes.
Abortion does nothing to address these injustices; in fact, it is a tool that allows them to continue. Why should any employer feel it necessary to pay more money for an employee to carry and then care for a baby, when they can just pay less money for her to have an abortion instead?
Aside from this, abortion robs a preborn child of his or her future each and every time.
In a post published on Instagram, Legend praised Teigen for her abortion advocacy. “Proud is an understatement,” he said, adding, “Chrissy, like many of us, has spent the last two years listening to and learning from frontline advocates and providers, including ARC Southeast and the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta. She witnessed the profound care and compassion extended to each patient—care that should be a universal right but remains inaccessible to many. Proud of my wife for demonstrating that we can learn, give, share stories, and continue to fight for accessible reproductive healthcare for everyone.”
A bad example
Perhaps the most sad part of this entire exchange is that Teigen and Legend’s children were there to witness it all. And she said it was for them that she has begun fiercely advocating for abortion. “For me, a fire was lit when these rights were taken away from us. I have so much hope for the future, though. I have so much hope for my daughter,” she said. She then addressed her daughter, Luna, directly.
“Luna, my girl, I hope that you see all of the incredible people, mainly women, in this room, and I hope that when you grow up you want to fight for justice in the way that we do, unapologetically and without fear, and know that your body is your own, and nobody can take that away from you,” she said, adding in her interview with ELLE, “Maybe it’s a selfish thing, but to have her get to see me up there speaking to our vice president made me so happy. She said she was proud after, and that made me proud. And I know that she’s going to do really big things too, and I’m excited for that. I’m excited for her to be unapologetic and staunch in her convictions and be ready to fight this fight, because it’s not going to end anytime soon. We’re going to take two steps forward. There’s always going to be another back, but hopefully we can always make our way towards progress.”
It’s extremely odd to hear a parent say that progress means the ability for their daughter to have an abortion — taking the life of their grandchild — as opposed to hoping for a future in which their daughter never feels her only choice is to have an abortion.
Luna, and every other girl out there, should never have to worry that if she gets pregnant, she will have to drop out of school; she should be able to get an education without killing her own child. Luna shouldn’t have to fear that if she gets pregnant, she’ll be fired, or won’t have access to maternity leave and prenatal care. Luna, and every other woman, should feel assured that even if their pregnancies are unexpected and unplanned, there are resources in their communities to help them through the surprise without feeling that abortion is the only choice they can make.
Despite what Teigen said, no woman goes into an abortion facility “excited” to be there. They’re there because they feel they have no other options, and that’s not the future anyone should hope for. Women deserve better than that. A future where all women can hope for is abortion is not a hope-filled future at all.
