Chelsea Clinton: I’m Pregnant!

Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are starting a family.

ByABC News
April 17, 2014, 4:28 PM

— -- Former – and potentially future – First Daughter Chelsea Clinton made the big reveal on Thursday: She’s pregnant.

She announced the news during a speech in New York City with her mother, Hillary Clinton, at her side.

“Marc and I are very excited that we have our first child arriving later this year,” she said at the Lower East Side Girls Club at the end of a Clinton Foundation event dedicated to empowering young girls.

Clinton did not say if she and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are having a boy or a girl. But she later tweeted that her due date is sometime this fall.

“I certainly feel all the better whether it’s a girl or a boy that she or he will grow up in a world full of so many strong, young female leaders,” she told the audience full of young women. “So thank you for inspiring me.”

Grandmother-to-be Hillary Clinton connected the announcement to the focus of the day’s event, telling the crowd that she is not only excited for her family but for the future generations who may not have to face the same glass ceilings as she did.

“Obviously we are very excited about what's happening in our family,” she told the young women. “But we're also very excited because of what we're doing that we hope gives confidence and support to so many of you across our country as you make decisions about the lives you want to lead and try to make sure there are no ceilings that are stopping you from going as far and as high and as fast as you can.”

Actress America Ferrera, who was moderating the event, noted Hillary’s happiness: “I don't think anyone was smiling as big as your mom at that announcement.”

“I just hope that I will be as good a mom to my child -- hopefully children -- as my mom was to me,” Chelsea replied.

Bill and Hillary Clinton both responded on Twitter shortly after the announcement Thursday afternoon.

The news shouldn’t come as a complete shock.

In an interview with Glamour magazine last year, Clinton said that she and her husband were planed to make 2014 “the Year of the Baby.”

"We sat down and said, 'Here's what we want to do.' The first thing on the list was simple: We want, God willing, to start a family,” Clinton told the Magazine. “So we decided we were going to make 2014 the Year of the Baby.”

At the time Clinton added, “Call my mother and tell her that. She asks us about it every single day."

Indeed, Hillary Clinton has made no secret of the fact she’s been eager to become a grandmother.

“I will certainly tell you, that’s a title I would be proud to have,” Clinton said last fall.

And in September, former President Bill Clinton was asked the question by Charlie Rose: Would his wife prefer the title “president” or “grandmother”?

“If you ask her, I think she'd say grandmother," Bill Clinton said, "but I have found it best not to discuss that issue…. My goal is to live to be a grandfather.”

ABC’s Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.