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Chrissy Teigen Blasted For Supporting Planned Parenthood In Wake Of Colorado Springs Shooting

By Treva Bowdoin
Published on: 10:33 PST, Nov 28, 2015

Chrissy Teigen decided to show her support for women’s health in the wake of the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and some of her Twitter followers were less than impressed with her response to America’s latest mass shooting.

According to USA Today, a gunman holed himself up in the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic on Friday. The suspect, 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear, reportedly used an assault-style weapon to randomly shoot at people in the clinic’s parking lot before moving inside, and a shootout with police ensued. During the five-hour ordeal, three people were killed and nine others were injured. Dear eventually surrendered to police.

Authorities still aren’t sure whether the suspect was specifically targeting Planned Parenthood, but Chrissy Teigen revealed that the tragedy inspired her and her husband, John Legend, to make a donation to the women’s health organization.

“Every time s–t like this happens, john and I immediately make another donation to planned parenthood,” Chrissy tweeted.

According to E! News, the model’s tweet caused a massive firestorm of criticism. She was accused of using the tragedy to support a political agenda, and some of Teigen’s followers complained that her donation wasn’t going to the Colorado Springs Police Department instead of Planned Parenthood (a police officer was one of the three victims who were killed during the shootout). Chrissy Teigen responded to her critics by getting in a tweet-fight with a few of them.

“Why do you assume it has anything to with a planned parenthood? It’s NEAR it, not IN it,” one of Chrissy Teigen’s followers complained. The Twitter user clearly got her facts about the shooting wrong, but Chrissy chose not to call her out on this.

“Happy to donate either way,” Chrissy Teigen responded.

In response to another Twitter user who criticized her for tweeting her support for Planned Parenthood instead of the Colorado Police Department, Chrissy Teigen pointed out that it’s possible for a person to care about more than one organization.

“It might seem insane, but it’s possible to support two things at once. I suggest you do the same,” Chrissy tweeted. She included a link to the Police Foundation of Colorado Springs.

When things got a bit too heated, Chrissy Teigen simply started telling her critics to “f**k off.”

This isn’t the first time Chrissy Teigen has been attacked on Twitter for using the social media site to share her feelings in the wake of a tragedy. Last October, she dared to tweet about the numerous mass shootings that take place in America.

“Active shooting in Canada, or as we call it in America, Wednesday,” Teigen wrote.

According to MSNBC, there was a huge backlash to this tweet. One Twitter user told Teigen to “rot in hell,” and another wanted her to suffer by seeing her husband murdered. Fox News commentator Andrea Tantaros responded to Teigen’s tweet by sharing her belief that models should only be seen and not heard.

“She is known for obviously her lovely bottom and her food Instagram pictures,” Tantaros said. “This is the problem when models start to talk. It plays into the dumb model stereotype.”

Chrissy Teigen responded to the hate by threatening to leave Twitter for Instagram, but obviously the FABLife host changed her mind. This time around, she encouraged her haters to simply unfollow her instead of subjecting her to their “ignorant rants.”

According to Jezebel, this isn’t the first time Chrissy Teigen has used Twitter to express her support for Planned Parenthood. Earlier this month, she defended the organization after an anti-abortion group began circulating videos that purportedly show Planned Parenthood employees illegally profiting from the sale of tissue from aborted fetuses. The videos led to a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood, and many Republicans called to defund the organization that provides women’s health services like pap smears, breast cancer screenings, contraception, and STD testing and treatment.

“That heavily doctored and edited video is not real,” Teigen tweeted. “It is called a scare tactic.”

According to the New York Times, a private research company did indeed find that the videos in question had been manipulated. The New York Daily News reports that threats against abortion providers have spiked in response to the debunked videos, but it’s unclear whether the videos played any part in Robert Lewis Dear’s decision to attack the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs.

Chrissy Teigen isn’t the only celebrity who responded to the shooting by expressing support for Planned Parenthood — Kathy Griffin also asked her Twitter followers to donate to the organization, and Kerry Washington said that she was praying for the Colorado Springs clinic.

[Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for A+E Networks]

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