Leah Messer, 28, wishes she could turn the tables of her past and not lie to people, including her ex-husband Jeremy Calvert, 31, about having a miscarriage in 2012 when she really had an abortion with her third pregnancy. The Teen Mom 2 star revealed her thoughts in a new interview with Us Weekly about her tell-all memoir Hope, Grace & Faith, which was released on May 5, and she didn’t hold back in admitting she didn’t feel she was very “considerate” about others’ feelings when she did lie.
“[If I could change anything,] I would have been more honest about the abortion. I would’ve owned that then and been 100 percent honest,” she told the outlet. “I would have been more considerate — even about my journey in general, just holding myself accountable and holding myself high for my journey.”
Leah’s regret comes after she first admitted to having the abortion for the first time in her memoir. She explained the reasons behind her decision and how her mom told her she could take abortion pills in secret. She dug deep about her emotional state after she went ahead and took the pills in the text of the book and went into detail about what happened.
“I didn’t feel anything after I left the clinic, but the next day I took the second pill and a few hours later I started cramping,” she wrote. “They told me that it would be like having a heavy period, but it was way more than that. My mom was with me and when the cramping started, she called Jeremy. When she told him I was having a miscarriage, the way she played the role of concerned mother was so damn convincing even I couldn’t tell she was lying. The really f–ked up part though, was that I couldn’t help thinking she was enjoying all the drama. I remember listening to her talking to Jeremy on the phone and wondering how the hell I had let this happen. The pain just kept getting worse and worse, and there was so much blood. … I don’t think it was real to me until that moment and all I could think was, what the f–k did I just do? It was the worst thing I had ever been through.”
In her memoir, she also admitted that since the season of Teen Mom 2 was already finished filming when her abortion happened, she thought it wouldn’t be included on the show, but after she told the producers she lost the baby, they sent a film crew to her and made sure to feature it on the popular reality series. “When they showed up the next morning I was still cramping and bleeding heavily,” she explained in the book. “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.”
Leah, who is now the mother of three children, including her 10-year-old twin daughters Aliannah and Aleeah and seven-year-old daughter Adalyn, also explained that although she decided to lie about the abortion back when she had it, it wasn’t something that weighed lightly on her. “It felt so dark because it was hidden,” she said. “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.”