Ted Cruz has faced an angry backlash after claiming that Chrissy Teigen is wrong for describing her own miscarriage as an abortion.
The senator from Texas explained on his podcast The Cloakroom that the medically induced abortion the entertainer had two years ago was actually a miscarriage as it had saved her life.
Teigen and husband John Legend lost their son Jack at week 20 of the pregnancy, with Teigen explaining on social media at the time that she had suffered a miscarriage after a month of bleeding.
Earlier this month she said that in the wake of Roe v Wade being overturned in June, she has now come to terms that what she went through was an abortion and not a miscarriage.
Teigen and Legend are parents to six-year-old daughter Luna and four-year-old son Miles. Teigen is currently pregnant again.
She credited her musician husband with helping her understand what she had been through, but that was apparently not good enough for Mr Cruz.
“If there’s a medical procedure in that context, it’s not an abortion,” he said on the podcast.
“And it is the law in all 50 states and it should be the law in all 50 states, that doctors can intervene to save the life of the mother, even if it means tragically losing the child.
“That there is nobody even — the most robust pro-life advocates. Nobody argues that when the woman’s life is in danger, that you can’t take extraordinary medical steps to preserve the mother’s life.
“And so in those circumstances, she may want to characterize it as abortion in this political context, but she described it at the time as a miscarriage. And it certainly sounds like that was an accurate description.”
Social media users were quick to heap criticism on the Canadian-born politician.
“Just like the dipwit president of (Americans United for Life), Rafael is redefining ‘abortion’ to suit his agenda,” wrote one Twitter user, while another branded him “Prof Dr Ted Cancun Cruz.”
Another Twitter user added: “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say I don’t give a flying f**k about Ted Cruz’s opinion of Chrissy Teigen’s ... anything. Don’t you have a job (Ted Cruz)?”
