LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Model and television personality Chrissy Teigen, who is married to singer John Legend, has revealed that she had an abortion in 2020 to save her life when it became clear her son would not live, not a miscarriage as the couple said.

The 36-year-old Teigen explained that she did not fully process what had happened when she was 20-weeks pregnant until after the US Supreme Court this year overturned Roe v Wade, the decision guaranteeing the nationwide right to the procedure.

"Let's just call it what it was: It was an abortion," Teigen said Thursday at an event organized by social impact agency Propper Daley, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

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

Teigen was hospitalized in September 2020 and later published multiple social media posts recounting her experience of losing a baby, which would have been her third with Legend. The couple share daughter Luna and son Miles.

She said at the time she was "shocked and in the kind of deep pain you only hear about."

The couple's posts about the miscarriage triggered an outpouring of responses.

On Thursday, Teigen, who is now pregnant again, said Legend had helped her realize what truly happened.

"I told the world we had a miscarriage, the world agreed we had a miscarriage, all the headlines said it was a miscarriage.

"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."

Teigen and Legend, an entertainer with a rare EGOT of awards -- an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony -- met on the set of one of his music videos before marrying in 2013.