I am retraumatized remembering what happened to me

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
October 28, 2024

I have heard too many people talking about being pro-life and pro-choice. The truth of what is behind all of the talk has been silenced. Once a choice is taken away from someone, it is taken away from all of us.

My heart breaks for all the people who have suffered because they had to go through horrifying medical emergencies. No one asked them if they wanted what they were forced to endure. It didn't matter if they wanted to be pregnant or not. It didn't matter if they were Republican or Democrat, Independent, or refused to vote for the people running for election. All that mattered was a female was pregnant and needed medical intervention.

Read Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, are turned away from ERs despite federal law from Associated Press to understand what has me re-traumatized.

The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.

Some people live in states where they feel as if voting to codify the choice over what to do with their own bodies has made them safe from those horror stories. They failed to wonder what would happen if the people running for office had already stated they wanted to ban abortions across the nation. More perplexing is they do not seem to wonder what would happen to them should they need what they voted for and what they voted to take away from everyone.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky when a pregnancy went wrong and nearly killed me, but laws protect my life. It was in the early 80s when I was carrying twins. My husband and I were thrilled. He went to every doctor's appointment with me. That thrill turned into a deadly nightmare when I started to bleed. Our doctor told me to get to the emergency room. I was hemorrhaging in the wheelchair while the nurse was checking me in. As I was wheeled away, I left a trail of blood behind me, and the seat was soaked. One of the twins came out. The doctor had to abort the other one to save my life.

As bad as that was, my husband blamed himself because of Agent Orange from Vietnam. It didn't matter that our doctor explained that the egg had split wrong. His mild #PTSD became full-blown because he lost the ability to fight it. I had nightmares because when it all happened, I was in the maternity ward and had to listen to babies crying and people celebrating the joy of a new life in the world after I lost the two I hoped would come too.

There was no debate over if the doctor could be arrested for doing it. My doctor didn't have to wait for the hospital administrator to approve the procedure. There was no judge or politician to make us wait for their power to choose what happened to me. My life was saved without delay because the law protected me.

No one else had the power to get involved. No one claiming to be pro-life had the power to let my life end because what they decided was right for them gave them the ability to make decisions for me. All of this is playing out across the country, and I am retraumatized remembering what happened to me so long ago. I wonder if any of them have contemplated it happening to them.

I know I didn't think it could happen to me until it did.

I wonder if they ever thought that once this right is taken away from everyone because that is what they wanted, what is the next right they will see gone. I am pro-choice because of what happened to me, and I don't want the power to choose for someone else.