Chrissy Teigen joins Idaho women who needed abortions in final push for ballot initiative

It took two years for Chrissy Teigen to realize she’d had an abortion and not a miscarriage, longer to understand what went wrong in her pregnancy, and not until this week to realize she hadn’t fully grappled with it emotionally.

Teigen, a former model and business owner, came to Idaho on Wednesday to make a final push leading up to Nov. 3 in favor of Proposition 1, the ballot measure that would restore access to abortion in Idaho. The state has a near-total ban that applies to any stage of pregnancy, with exceptions only for rape and incest in the first trimester and to save a pregnant patient’s life. The initiative, if passed, would also protect access to birth control and fertility assistance treatments such as in vitro fertilization.

Opponents to the measure have called the initiative too extreme because it would allow abortions up to fetal viability, which was the law in Idaho prior to the ban, with exceptions after that point when the pregnancy threatens a patient’s health or life. 

Told her baby wouldn’t survive, she had to leave Idaho for an abortion. She’s sharing her story.

Prior to a rally in downtown Boise with Prop 1 volunteers and supporters, Teigen — who lived in Idaho Falls in the early 1990s — met privately at a coffee shop with 12 Idaho women who have been telling their stories for the campaign about needing abortion care in Idaho. The women sat in a circle and told brief versions of their stories: miscarriages that led to septic infections because of hesitant medical providers, travel out of state for fatal anomalies and catastrophic health complications, and memorials to the babies they lost. 

Nonprofit organization Idahoans United for Women and Families, which has led the campaign for the initiative, coordinated the event, and owners of Neckar Coffee donated the space and coffee. 

Kate Campbell spoke of her son, Remy, and the infected placenta that caused her water to break at 20 weeks and begin labor. A fetus generally can’t survive outside of the womb before 22 weeks, and every day that goes by without an abortion procedure increases the risk of a potentially life-threatening infection, which can cause organ damage and lead to fertility loss. 

Since Idaho’s law only allows for intervention to save a patient’s life, doctors decided not to wait until she was close to death and airlifted Campbell to Utah for care. Utah allows abortion until 18 weeks, and after that, the law includes an exception to preserve a patient’s health, not just to prevent death.

“The only ‘cure,’ if you will, for an infected placenta is giving birth,” Campbell said through tears. She now has a 14-month-old daughter.

Desi Ballis had a similar story about a virus she contracted early in pregnancy that caused a fatal anomaly that also put her health in danger. A doctor at her 20-week ultrasound told her she needed to get to Utah as quickly as possible, and she and her husband, Morgan, made the five-hour drive and called multiple hospitals and clinics before they found someone who could help.  

“It was just horrific,” Ballis said.

Others included Rebecca Crozier, who received a fatal fetal diagnosis of anencephaly at 11 weeks and told Stateline her story this week, and Abby Nichols, who traveled to Seattle for an abortion after she received a fetal diagnosis of Trisomy 18, a chromosomal abnormality that is often fatal or life-limiting. 

With each story, Teigen grew more emotional, until it was her turn to talk about the baby she lost at 20 weeks in 2020 after a placental abruption, which occurs when the placenta detaches from the uterine wall, causing heavy bleeding and cutting off the oxygen and nutrient supply to the fetus.

“I think I’m so emotional because hearing all of your stories makes you face what actually happened, right?” Teigen said. “And I had it so easy compared to you guys, I didn’t even have to think about that extra added layer of having to go somewhere or feeling shame for it.”

Teigen received multiple blood transfusions and was trying to make it to 22 weeks, but said her doctor eventually told her she was losing too much blood and they needed to induce delivery. Her doctor didn’t call it an abortion, and when Teigen posted about what happened on Instagram, she wrote only that health providers couldn’t stop the bleeding, and that she and her husband, singer John Legend, were “in the kind of deep pain you only hear about.” She included photos from her hospital bed with Legend, holding the baby they’d been calling Jack.

She described some of the backlash she received for posting the photos, accusing her of seeking attention. But two years later, that backlash intensified.

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“When I said, ‘Hey guys, I didn’t miscarry, I had an abortion,’ and then it was almost like, ‘Oh, we felt bad for you before, now we don’t feel bad for you,’” Teigen said. At 20 weeks’ gestation, an induced labor is a type of abortion. 

Campbell told Teigen that she was grateful for how open she’d been with her story, because when she was asked whether she wanted pictures of Remy and casts of handprints and footprints, she remembered Teigen’s story and how she had unapologetically posted the photos.

Teigen told Stateline that in the years since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion, she has been an advocate for abortion rights, including traveling to Arizona when the state passed its abortion ballot initiative in 2024. But there was something different and deeply affecting about sitting with the Idaho women, she said, and no longer being able to block out the emotions around her experience.

Whether Proposition 1 passes or fails, she said, the stories about abortion will continue to matter outside of politics.

“Going through something like this is so isolating,” she said. “It’s so important to talk about this, and to release it, and to not hold it in like I’ve been doing.”

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at [email protected].