Chrissy Teigen "Didn't Know" She Had a Late-Term Abortion Amid Complications

She opened up about the "stigma" of the experience.

Chrissy Teigen is opening up about getting a late-term abortion to save her life—and how she didn’t understand what was happening to her body at the time. While speaking at an Arizona rally on Sunday in support of Proposition 139, which would amend the state’s constitution to allow the right to an abortion, the model opened up about her heartbreaking—and confusing—experience with losing her late son Jack amidst life-threatening pregnancy complications in 2020.

While addressing the crowd, Teigen revealed that she originally thought she experienced a miscarriage because she didn’t experience any pain when her 20-week pregnancy took “a turn for the worse” and she experienced a partial placenta abruption, per a video of her speech shared by CNN.

“I never thought of it as being anything other than a miscarriage,” she said of her experience. “We hear the word abortion, we think there's some kind of pain with it…nowhere in those days in the hospital getting blood transfusions did I think that I was in danger of losing this baby because I was in no pain.”

Even after losing her son Jack, Teigen said she didn’t completely understand what actually happened because of the “stigma” of the word abortion.

“Nobody wants to say abortion...I didn’t even know I had one. And that was so embarrassing to admit in front of the entire world,” she continued.

It was only when Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022 that Teigen recalls having a conversation with her husband John Legend where she realized what had happened.

“I remember it happening and me looking at John saying, ‘That is so terrible what those people have to go through and this choice they have to make. That is so terrible for them,’ she remembered. “And then he said, ‘for you, for us.’” Shocked, she responded, “‘What do you mean?’ He's like, ‘You had an abortion.’ […] And I was like, ‘No fucking way. Really? No way.’ My mind was blown that day.”

“I realized that same day that if I didn't know the language around this and I didn't know what was happening to my body, how could other people possibly empathize with our situation and our scenario?” Teigen added.

The cookbook author previously opened up about the “heartbreaking decisions” she and Legend had to make while speaking at Propper Daley's A Day of Unreasonable Conversation summit in 2022.

"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. It became very clear around halfway through that he would not survive, and that I wouldn't either without any medical intervention," she shared at the time.

While Teigen said she originally called it a pregnancy loss, she decided to speak out about her experience to reduce the stigma surrounding abortion.

"Let's just call it what it was: It was an abortion," she added. "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."