Teen Mom 2 star Leah Messer has revealed she had an abortion eight years ago but covered it up as a miscarriage.
The 28-year-old reality star, who has three daughters, makes the revelation in her upcoming memoir Hope, Grace, & Faith and is now opening up about why she kept it a secret.
On the season four premiere of the MTV show, which aired in 2013, Leah said she’s suffered a miscarriage, when in actuality she’d had her pregnancy terminated.
Secret: Leah Messer has admitted she had an abortion eight years ago but told MTV producers it was a miscarriage during season 4 of Teen Mom 2
She told People: ‘I had very low self esteem at that point in my life and I 100 percent allowed others to control my decision making,’ she said of allowing people to convince her to cover up the abortion.
Leah writes in her book that people, including her mother Dawn, encouraged her to say she’d had a miscarriage when she realized she wasn’t ready to have a third child with then-fiancé Jeremy Calvert.
‘I truly, wholeheartedly felt like I convinced myself that that’s really what was happening,’ Leah said of telling people she’d lost her baby.
Leah, 28, reveals in her new memoir that she allowed others to influence her decision in lying about the abortion
The reality star is mother to three girls: 10-year-old twins Aliannah and Aleeah (with ex-husband Corey Simms) and seven-year-old daughter Adalynn (with ex-husband Jeremy Calvert).
Leah was struggling as a mother to her twins at the time she got pregnant with Calvert’s baby. She also reveals in the book that she was still dealing with feelings for her ex Simms.
After discussing it with a couple of people in her close circle, Leah decided to take abortion pills.
She then told MTV producers that she’d lost the baby and they sent cameras to document Leah dealing with the aftermath of her ‘miscarriage’ and her distress as she processed her emotions.
Leah is mom to 10-year-old twins Aliannah and Aleeah (with ex-husband Corey Simms) and seven-year-old daughter Adalynn (far right) (with ex-husband Jeremy Calvert)
Tough decision: Leah was struggling as a mother to her twins at the time she got pregnant with Calvert’s baby. She is pictured with ex Calvert in June 2019. They welcomed their daughter in 2013
‘Looking back now, I just wish I would have owned it. I wish I would’ve owned what was going on,’ Leah told People.
‘[I wish I hadn’t been] fearful of what everyone was going to say … but I’m not going to dwell on the decision I made at that time. I’m going to rise above the decision I made and learn from that experience.’
The mother-of-three says it’s been therapeutic to write about her experiences in the memoir and she now feels she’s taking control of her story.
An excerpt from Leah’s book, provided by People, describes the moment Teen Mom 2 producers sent cameras to film Leah shortly after losing her baby.
Her girls: Leah also opens up in her book about struggling with her daughter Aliannah’s health. The 10-year-old (top right) suffers from muscular dystrophy
‘We had already finished filming for that season so I thought at least I wouldn’t have to film about it, but when I called the producers that night to tell them I had lost the baby, they said they were sending a film crew out to my house to film the miscarriage for the show. When they showed up the next morning I was still cramping and bleeding heavily. I had barely processed what had happened, and I was genuinely heartbroken because I had convinced myself I had given up the only boy I would ever have. I hated myself for the lie, but I was in so deep there was no turning back.
‘I can look back now without regret, but for the longest time, I wasn’t okay with the choice I had made. It felt so dark because it was hidden. I wasn’t able to talk publicly or privately about it because I let the people who were closest to me at the time convince me that it was something I needed to hide. It wasn’t until I was finally able to bring myself to tell Jeremy what had really happened that I started to realize that as long as I was living with the lie it would keep eating away at me. I carried the pain and the guilt around with me for years, until I finally got to the point where I could hold myself accountable for my choices without punishing myself for them.’
Elsewhere in Leah’s book, she recalls the time she considered taking her own life as her daughter Aliannah faced a scary health battle.
Single mom struggles: Also in Leah’s book, she recalls the time considered taking her own life as her daughter Aliannah, 10, faced a scary health battle
She reveals she once thought about driving her vehicle off of a cliff in her native West Virginia.
‘When I think about Ali, I just want to know why this is happening to her,’ Leah writes in the book. ‘She is so sweet and innocent. She deserves to have the same future as her sisters.’
‘I want to scream at the world that it isn’t fair. I would never wish what Ali has on another child, but why her? Why did she have to be born into a body that won’t have the strength to run along the beach, do a cartwheel, or climb a tree?’
‘I’m so sad and angry all the time I can barely eat … or sleep … or breathe,’ she writes. ‘I feel like I’m suffocating. When I close my eyes at night, the voice in my head gets stuck in an endless loop.
”Is it my fault? Is Ali being punished because I’m a bad person?’ she syas. ‘Am I doing enough to get her the help she needs? Do I even deserve to be her mother? Maybe the girls would be better off without me.’
But she realized her daughters need her and that ‘it would be selfish to abandon them.’
‘For better or worse, I’m all they have,’ she writes. ‘I need to be stronger. I need to get the hell out of here and fix myself, so I can be the mother that my daughters deserve.’
Hope, Grace, & Faith hits shelves May 5.
‘When I think about Ali, I just want to know why this is happening to her,’ Leah writes in the book. ‘She is so sweet and innocent. She deserves to have the same future as her sisters.’