Chrissy Teigen on Her Abortion

June 20, 2024

A chat at the White House ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

June 20, 2024

Evening, Meteor readers,

All morning, I was stressed about something trivial. But at noon, I read the following headline: A nearby black hole just woke up and devoured a whole galaxy. So that puts things in perspective! Also, RIP to galaxy SDSS1335+0728… we hardly knew ye.

Back on planet Earth, we paid a visit to Washington, D.C. for a conversation between Chrissy Teigen and Vice President Kamala Harris about abortion access two years post-Dobbs. Plus, your weekend reading list.

Waiting for the asteroid,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

CHRISSY TEIGEN, VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS, AND THEIR EXCELLENT CHEEKBONES IN CONVERSATION (SCREENSHOT VIA THE WHITE HOUSE)

The Meteor’s SOL spent this afternoon at the White House listening to a conversation between Vice President Kamala Harris and Chrissy Teigen. (John Legend and all four of the pair’s children were in attendance; Wren, their youngest, had turned a year old on Juneteenth.) The event was timed to the anniversary, coming up Monday‚ of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The impact of that decision, VP Harris said, “is not just that it offends some intellectual or conceptual or academic notion. The harm, the actual harm that has occurred to real people, every day since that decision came down is immeasurable.”

Teigen became an advocate after seeing that harm. Today, she spoke about her own experience having an abortion due to complications from a pregnancy in 2020, and a more recent experience touring Feminist Women’s Health Center, an abortion clinic in Atlanta. (Some of its doctors were also in attendance at the White House.) Here, three of the most moving things Teigen shared:

On her own experience: “For those of you that don’t know, in 2020, I finally got naturally pregnant. All these little beautiful babies that are here on the front row today came about by IVF, but I found myself pregnant naturally for the first time. So we were very excited. We learned we were having a baby boy. I started having complications pretty early on… I ended up having a placental abruption and was bleeding out, essentially, but felt no pain—it was [a] very odd, unique experience, because I always imagined if you’re losing a baby, you would feel some sort of cramping or pain. I just remember going to the hospital and really feeling like things were going to be okay. We didn’t really feel like anything was gonna go wrong, but things turned bad very quickly. I needed blood transfusion after blood transfusion. 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 having an abortion. And it’s so weird to say, because I didn’t realize that until the Dobbs decision.”
On the importance of using the word “abortion”: “I had no idea. That language wasn’t used in the room that I was in; it was never said by my doctor; it was never said by anyone around me. I just assumed that I had miscarried. I didn’t even realize. And [later] I honestly felt so ignorant for not having known that for so many years: I didn’t know what was happening to my own body. But I think that word is so scary to people. It’s so taboo to talk about…and humanizing this taboo subject is so important.”
On the reality of abortion care: “The Right loves to call [Planned Parenthood] an abortion clinic, because it makes it seem so targeted and so evil. What I experienced [at Feminist Women’s Health Center] was nothing like that. The amount of not just physical care, but mental care, going in and knowing that you have privacy, that you have somebody that’s looking into your eyes. I thought I was gonna make it through the tour okay, but I started crying once I saw this beautiful mural of butterflies above the operating suite. And I looked over at [a doctor there] and she looked me in the eye and she said, ‘You could have had butterflies.’ It really stayed with me, and it stays with all those people that have come through…clinics across America, to have that kind of care and that warmth….And all the women deserve to have the same thing.”

Teigen went on to point out that there are risks to all Americans—not just those in states with abortion bans. “We’ve seen calls for a national abortion ban [and] a push to restrict access to contraception and IVF.” You can watch more of SOL’s day—and the conversation with the Vice President—on our Instagram stories.

AND:

A UN fact-finding team is investigating allegations of sexual slavery in detention centers in Sudan, which has been locked in a brutal civil war for more than a year. Millions of people have been displaced, and earlier this week, diplomats at a UN Security Council meeting accused the UAE of quietly supplying weapons to paramilitary squads in the region.
Louisiana has passed a law requiring public school classrooms and state-funded colleges to display a poster with the Ten Commandments—yes, the ones from the Old Testament. The justification for this move is that the commandments are the “foundational” laws of the nation. OK, but one of the commandments is “thou shalt not steal,” and land theft is the actual foundation of this nation. So in addition to the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing, not sure this explanation holds any water, does it?
Cameron Brink, the number two WNBA draft pick and one of the rookies bringing more eyeballs to the W, tore her ACL during a game on Tuesday and will miss the rest of her rookie season—and the Olympics.

CAMERON BRINK COMING OFF THE COURT AFTER HER KNEE INJURY. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Every day, there is a frightening new story about just how deadly extreme weather is becoming, and today is no different. This week, when temperatures in Saudi Arabia exceeded 120 degrees, more than 1000 religious pilgrims died in Saudi Arabia while performing Hajj, a journey to Mecca which forms one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith.
Girls may be going through puberty much earlier than they once did, per a new study in the medical journal JAMA Network Open. The study found that since 1950, “the number of people experiencing early menarche (defined as younger than age 11) nearly doubled to 16 percent.” Research is still needed, and factors may range from food quality and rising obesity rates to COVID to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (like phthalates), but the outcome is the same: higher risk for breast cancer, adult obesity, and cardiovascular disease, as well as higher instances of mental health challenges. As to the latter, NatGeo’s coverage of the issue had an essential tip for parents of children developing early menarche: Try “normalizing the experiences as best they can.”

WEEKEND READING 📚

On preserving history: Nestled in a corner of an ever-changing Brooklyn sits Toñita’s, the last Puerto Rican social club in the borough. (HellGate)

On queer liberation: An intimate look behind the scenes of the world’s first Arab and anti-Orientalist drag festival. (Atmos)

On getting into the ‘ton: The regency romance show “Bridgerton” has created a space for characters of color in a story that could have easily been entirely white. But one Latina writer asks, “Why can’t it include us?” (Remezcla)