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.

Isn't it time to restore sanity under the law?

This is from Cornell Law School

A state's statutes will determine what constitutes standing in that particular state's courts. These typically revolve around the requirement that plaintiffs have sustained or will sustain direct injury or harm and that this harm is redressable.

What harm has been done to anyone other than the one making the choice over their own body? How does it hurt those against abortions being a legal choice they make for themselves?

In Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (90-1424), 504 U.S. 555 (1992), the Supreme Court created a three-part test to determine whether a party has standing to sue:
The plaintiff must have suffered an "injury in fact," meaning that the injury is of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized and (b) actual or imminent
There must be a causal connection between the injury and the conduct brought before the court
It must be likely, rather than speculative, that a favorable decision by the court will redress the injury

It seems to me that this country's laws support those who have been harmed and not those who do not like the choices others make for themselves. So far, we've seen that the only people being harmed are those subjected to the will of others. I heard some claim they do not approve of it and do not want to pay for it. Somehow they fail to see there are many things people do not approve of but they pay for them all the same as a taxpayer. Could you imagine if anything else in this country was based on selective tax disbursements because someone claims it is morally wrong to them?

The thing is most people in this country support the right for people to decide for themselves, which is a good thing.

Support for abortion rights overall has increased as state legislatures and courtrooms have instituted a growing number of restrictions and bans, according to the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults say they support abortion rights, marking a 6-percentage point increase since last June.

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, U.S. opinions about that consequential decision remain largely unchanged in this latest poll. A majority of U.S. adults – 59 percent – still say they oppose the justices’ decision, which removed federal protections for many reproductive health care services, while another 40 percent of Americans agree with the nation’s highest court. (PBS)

No one should have the right to take a right away from someone else. No one should have the right to force their beliefs on anyone else while demanding their own rights be protected. Isn't it time to restore sanity under the law? 

There are females all over this country subjected to harm after harm, including the females that wanted to have children. Should it go wrong, they are subjected to suffering because doctors have been threatened with jail and fines for providing medical help. Young females discovering their rapist, not only removed the right of choice by forced sex but also subjected them to more harm having to fight to decide the rest of their lives. The list of harm being done goes on and on while more and more states substitute their "morality" for everyone else. 

It isn't just about abortions but sexual personal decisions everyone had equal rights to decide for themselves. When parents had the right to decide for their own children what is right for them or not. This is all more reminder of how we ended up with the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Forced morality and "Christian" values are an abysmal demonstration of God's Love.

Can you hug yourself?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 15, 2022

I am still on healing hiatus and going through therapy to work through the grief of losing one of my best friends. It's hard. What I'm learning is that while I have great compassion for others, I don't seem to have it for myself,

This became clear on my way home from one of the appointments. I am a hugger by nature. While thinking about what the therapist said, I realized I am unable to hug myself.

This site started to help veterans and families heal from trauma and expanded to include everyone else, like me, heal as survivors of trauma. It is, as it was, a way of changing the conversation of PTSD from "victim" to "survivor" with the power to determine the rest of your life on your terms and not what others do or how they treat you.

The first way to hug me is to use my compassion for others to express what I see in this country with our rights being taken away by the same people screaming about their rights and what they believe should have the power to remove them from them all others.

I think a great deal about how this all is like the Salem Witchcraft Trails. Too many do not know that because zealots decided what they believed was worthy of killing those who were different. What happened in Salem was the basis for the Bill Of Rights, insuring that what people believed was equally protected in the 1st Amendment.

Legal Legacy of the Salem Witch Trials
From the History Channel

On October 29, 1692, Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer, a decision that marked the beginning of the end for the Salem witch trials. By May 1693, Phips had pardoned and released all those remaining in prison on witchcraft charges.

In the years to come, judges and juries (and even one of the main accusers) apologized for their roles in the trials. Then in 1711 Massachusetts passed legislation exonerating those executed as witches and paying restitution to their families.

Nearly a century after the crisis in Salem, during debate over ratification of the Constitution, anti-Federalist delegates (successfully) argued that the document needed a "Bill of Rights" to guard against the violation of individual citizens’ fundamental freedoms by the federal government.

Such arguments may have implicitly drawn strength from the negative example of the Salem witch trials, when accused witches were deprived of even the most basic rights they should have been granted under English common law.

I am a Chaplain and Christian, however, I no longer attend services. I listen to people on TV talking about what they believe as if any of it should be considered as speaking for all Christians. We are not all the same and do not believe the same, which is why there are so many different Christian denominations. We are all free to choose to belong to whatever group we want or not attend at all. Considering less than half of Americans attend any type of religious service at all, it is deplorable that Christian Nationalists want to rule over all.

These zealots attack people making personal medical decisions about their own bodies and removing their right to believe what they want. Some believe that human life begins at birth when God breathes life into the body and they become a living soul. Some believe that while the zealots claim to be pro-life, they prove they are simply pro-birth instead. They claim to be in membership of followers of Jesus, yet fail to do what He preached for the sake of the living.

What gives them the right to decide what other people have to believe? What gives them the right to think they are entitled to stand in judgment of anyone needing to make one of the most traumatic decisions about what is happening in their own bodies?

Do they have a right to believe what they want? In this country, absolutely. So does everyone else. Do they have a right to interpret the Bible in any way they want? Sure. So does everyone else. They fail to see that.

Do they have the right to say what they want? No doubt about it, but again, so does everyone else. Too many politicians claim that they are being silenced and their supporters feel the same way, however, they fail to see that everyone else has the right to disagree with them while they enjoy the right to say what they want and then complain about being silenced in the next sentence they utter.

I am appalled listening to some of the zealots and with some others, they make me laugh by how much they get totally wrong, but they have the right to be as uninformed as everyone else. Their supporters have the right to believe them or not. That's a wonderful thing because no matter if we like what they say or not, we all have the choice to listen to them, or not.

Going back to the need to hug yourself, while other people get things wrong, or think unlike you, that doesn't mean you need to stop liking yourself. It doesn't mean you have to stop speaking your mind just because some people won't hear you. If other people won't try to comfort you, you can comfort yourself. If you have no one to talk to that will understand what you need to say, then find a therapist or group. When you get to a time in your life when you realize you can't hug yourself, that's time for you to take a look at all you have to give others and begin to give it to yourself!

We're having the wrong conversation on abortion

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 14, 2022 

Rape is traumatic. So is forcing someone to deliver the offspring of the rapist. Now imagine it is a 10-year-old girl?

Man charged with rape of 10-year-old who had abortion after rightwing media called story ‘not true’

BUT IT WAS TRUE!

Why does it matter aside from the obvious that this child had sex forced on her when she was raped, and the laws from zealots would force her to deliver the rapist's offspring and the age of 10? Because this was reported on The Guardian!

Protesters rally at the Ohio statehouse in support of abortion after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade on 24 June 2022 in Columbus, Ohio. Photograph: Barbara J Perenic/AP

Police say Ohio man confessed to raping a girl who went to Indiana for abortion, following the right’s attempts to discredit story

Gerson Fuentes, 27, who was arrested on Tuesday, appeared in Franklin county, Ohio, municipal court for an arraignment on Wednesday. A police investigator testified at the hearing that Fuentes had confessed to raping the girl at least twice.

The arrest came after rightwing media – and the Republican Ohio attorney general – had poured scorn on reports of the child’s abortion, suggesting it was “not true” and “too good to confirm”.

Now, while no one is trying to take away the rights of folks on the "right" to believe what they want, they seem to have been under the delusion they should be able to force what they believe on the rest of the country.

Imagine if they decided to have ten kids, but could not afford to have them, and laws were also passed to take away any social services they receive. You may think that is never going to happen but you need to think again because the "right" is also on the side of cutting social services to the poor and needy.

Imagine if they wanted to continue the pregnancy after a doctor said it would suffer from birth defects and would never be able to survive without constant medical care, but medical coverage was canceled because, yet again, the "right" seem to hate health care, along with all other social services they constantly slam and cut the budgets of.

Imagine this country adopted something like China when they had one child rule, replaced by allowing two children, and suddenly allowing three? Amnesty International has been fighting for the rights of people to make their own choices there. Will they have to do the same here and will we read something like this with China replaced by the USA?

"Governments have no business regulating how many children people have. Rather than 'optimising' its birth policy, China should instead respect people's life choices and end any invasive and punitive controls over people's family planning decisions," said the group's China team head, Joshua Rosenzweig.

While the "right" is all too willing to fight to take rights away because they don't like what people choose to do, they haven't noticed that they put their rights in peril from their own party. The rest of the people in this country fight for their rights and defend the rights of all others to make their own choices too! You know, the way it should be.

 

"This ain’t the America I signed up for."

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 10, 2022

It is no secret that there are good Chaplains in the military and some terrible Chaplains too. We've all heard stories of service members in spiritual turmoil seeing a Chaplain and then being told they were going to hell because they did not belong to the same faith as the Chaplain.

The question is, who are these Chaplains serving? Are they serving the men and women fighting for and defending our freedom around the world, from many different faiths, including no faith at all, or are they serving the churches they received endorsements from?

Spiritual help is vital to helping them heal from what is asked of them, plus they also have personal problems going on back home while they can be thousands of miles away. If they choose to seek a Chaplain's help, they have to settle on whatever Chaplain is with them. If the Chaplain is a good one, then they are helped and do not turn away from the faith they already had. If the Chaplain is putting their own personal choice of faith ahead of those who turn to them for help, it causes a lot more harm than not having one at all.

While I have some problems with Military Religious Freedom Foundation, there are times when I agree with what they do.

It is a wonder what they'll be hearing now that Roe v Wade has been overturned if they do not want to continue the pregnancy. They are already fighting back and looking for help.

Active Duty U.S. Naval Fighter pilot asks what will happen to women like her stationed in states where abortion is illegal: “MRFF Help for military abortion?” 

"This ain’t the America I signed up for. Military women have civil rights too. We just lost one this morning."

This came out in June about Independence Day as a "Christian Nation"

Encouraged by Wednesday’s major MRFF victory in getting the 246th Army Band of the South Carolina National Guard canceled from performing at a South Carolina Baptist church Christian nationalistic “Annual Carolina Celebration of Liberty,” members of a second military band came to MRFF for help in getting their upcoming scheduled performance at a large evangelical church’s Fourth of July event, which band members described as “some sort of ‘Celebration of the Founding of America as a Christian Nation’ which is just unacceptable to most of us in the Band,” canceled as well.

How can we expect men and women to put their lives on the line, go through endless hardships over and over again, and then discover this country they are willing to die for, won't even allow them to worship as they choose, or not worship at all? 

Not allow them to make their own choices over their own bodies? You know, the same bodies they place in danger all the time because they made the choice to do it! They all enlisted, willingly, by choice! What's next? 

How did they force their beliefs on the rest of us and get away with it?

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 8, 2022 

I am tired of hearing nonsense about #PTSD. I am tired of people thinking it only hits veterans. Tired of the media jumping up and down, putting one group over all others. Above all, I am tired of trying to offer hope of spiritual healing when all folks hear is how hateful Christians are. After all, they're the only ones getting the attention. Over the years I tried to explain a lot of things. So why am I trying to explain pro-choice? Because there is a whole lot of other stories out there and today, I have one about religious leaders supporting the facts that there are non-hateful Christians out there and there are plenty of us!

I am also tired of hateful people claiming to represent Jesus as a "Christian" yet have no connection to what He actually taught!

Here are just a few of them so that you won't be so offended when you hear "Christian" because we don't all believe what some do and then pretend they speak for all of us!

BTW There are more than 45,000 denominations globally. because we don't all believe the same!

Followers of Jesus span the globe. But the global body of more than 2 billion Christians is separated into thousands of denominations. Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Baptist, Apostolic, Methodist — the list goes on. Estimations show there are more than 200 Christian denominations in the U.S. and a staggering 45,000 globally, according to the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. So why does Christianity have so many branches?

A cursory look shows that differences in belief, power grabs and corruption all had a part to play.

But on some level, differentiation and variety have been markers of Christianity since the very beginning, according to Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor emeritus of church history at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. "There's never been a united Christianity," he told Live Science. discover more here

But here in America, there are many different faiths and many more with no connection to organized religion of any kind. So how is it that a fraction of people in this country managed to enforce their beliefs on the rest of us, and get away with it? 

Input

Brandan Robertson, a 29-year-old from Washington, D.C., is not the kind of advocate most people picture when they think of the pro-choice movement.

But on Tuesday evening, after the leak of a draft majority opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court that would overturn Roe v. Wade, he donned his blue clergy collar, and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other protesters outside the Supreme Court building.

Robertson, an author, activist, and lead pastor of “digital progressive faith community” Metanoia Church, hadn’t always been the type to attend such events. Throughout his teens and early twenties, he was heavily involved with the conservative evangelical scene and self-identified as an anti-gay, anti-abortion fundamentalist. find even more non-hateful Christian leaders here

MIC

“What we profess and what we live don't always add up,” Blackmon, now a nurse and an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC), says. “You don't know where you really stand until it’s personal.” Blackmon doesn’t believe she should have to tell her personal abortion story. But today, with abortion rights in the U.S. hanging by a thread, she’s telling it for the first time.

With many evangelicals celebrating the end of Roe v. Wade — and Catholic bishops even denying Communion to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her support of abortion rights — it’s easy to believe Christianity is inherently anti-abortion.

But Blackmon, an abortion rights advocate who serves as the UCC’s Associate General Minister of Justice and Local Church Ministries, says it’s critical to disentangle these ideas. In fact, her own denomination has been involved in abortion rights advocacy for decades; before the 1973 Supreme Court ruling recognized the right to abortion, UCC ministers were part of a clergy network connecting women to doctors willing to provide abortions based on their own understandings of Christianity. “I think the laziness of some Christianity has caused people with louder voices and more political presence to be able to draw a narrative that other Christian voices have to speak out against, so that people can think about this,” she says. read more of what she has to say here

If you don't think all this extra stress put on females and their families won't cause PTSD, then you are not thinking at all! 

GOP sold their souls for guns and ending choice

The Supreme Court just ended the right of females to decide their own futures. They used the "moral" argument to end it a day after they rules they could not limit gun rights. While most of us find all of this repulsive, the thing is, this is why they wanted the least Christian man to ever become President of the United States.

I remember when Trump was running and I heard Republican friends I knew to be churchgoers, saying how much their faith mattered to them. Yet these same people wanted Trump because he would appoint the next members of the Supreme Court. Why was this important to them? Guns and abortions. Just those two things. Nothing else mattered to them and that is why they didn't care what else he did.

These same people didn't care he used them, because they were using him. They didn't care what lies he told or how he was a complete total failure. All they care about was these two things. 

Truth didn't matter. What Jesus taught didn't matter. What He said they were supposed to be and how to treat other people, didn't matter. And yet, these same people show up at church and receive communion while their hearts have turned against everything He stood for.

Trump proved that he follows the father of lies, and didn't care about anyone but himself. We've seen all that with the January 6th hearings on what he did and how he was willing to do anything, sacrifice anyone for what he wanted and nothing else mattered. His supporters still say they would vote for him again.

They proved they were willing to support an egomaniacal minion of Satan into the abyss because they sold their souls to protect gunfights and sacrifice the rights of everyone else to make their own choices. They also ignored the fact that God Himself gave every human the free will to make their own choices.

Things have gotten so bad in this country because of them, that people are turning away from the church, feeling they cannot turn to God even if they want to because the only thing they see and hear is the zealots preaching against all Jesus taught.

I wrote three books to help people find spiritual healing with #PTSD and had to rewrite them because people liked the story but were "offended" by the Bible passages. The GOP managed to push the other Children of God away from Him because they never knew Him or they wouldn't have allowed themselves to be corrupted by the father of lies!

Right now, I pray the people I knew repent before it is too late for them to open their eyes and see the truth again.

The freewill to decide for themselves

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 16, 2022 

"Ekklesia means ‘the called out ones’ and was about God’s people, not a building."

From Stranger Angels 2nd Edition coming soon.

That is from Stranger Angels. Don't believe it because you never heard it mentioned in church? It should have been because it came from the Book of Acts 7:48-50

48 “However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says:
49 “‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be?
50 Has not my hand made all these things?

Jesus gave many lessons about one faith. He preached outside and told everyone to pray to "Our Father" instead of telling them they must do it in a church. There weren't any churches back then. There were only temples. 

They did not have all these different denominations of followers of Christ. Aside from that fact, this nation has the rights of all people to decide for themselves what they believed, or did not believe. 

The founding fathers were brilliant because those were the same rights and freedoms God grated every human. The freewill to decide for themselves.

So how did we ever get to the point where a religious point of view has been granted so much power over the rest of the people in this country? That is what the abortion debate is all about and is not what all Christians think. The Presbyterians came out and defend the rights of people to choose for themselves.

PARO welcomes those who support the full range of reproductive options that ensure that every child is loved and wanted. The network is committed to ensuring that the policy of the PC(USA) is articulated, understood, and preserved for future generations.

They are not alone defending choice. Presbyterians also support gay rights, but leave it up to congregations to choose to allow it or not. Choice within the same group is a marvelous thing to do. Imagine that! There are many divisions among Christians, and as it should be, however, anyone demanding a right be removed by anyone, or group, is wrong. That is why there are so many different beliefs in Christianity. Now set that aside and realize where you live. You live in a nation built upon freedom of religion. It is so important it is in the 1st Amendment to the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The right of all people to decide what they believe and how they will live their own lives is up to them. For the Supreme Court to dare demand everyone else obey a "moral" decision is anti-American and anti-God considering He gave us all the right to decide for ourselves.

Our moral values are often offended by those who scream the loudest because we have to defend ourselves against how they portray themselves on religious grounds. They give the false impression that they speak for all Christians.

It has gotten so bad, that my last three books had to be rewritten because while a lot of people thought the story was really good, they did not like the Bible passages. I included them in on the first editions because people who do not attend church, are usually not aware of how much power and comfort is within the pages. I had to take them out and only left the reference to where the thoughts came from.

That's the thing that really gets me because not attending a "church" is actually supported in the Bible itself. 

This is from Stranger Angels, coming soon on Amazon.

Chris, Bill and David just heard Greet talk about how Paul had Stephen stoned to death. Chris had been accused many times of trying to take down churches. Greer, the daughter of a fabulous preacher, was not just one of Chris's best friends, she was one of his defenders.

They all noticed her face changed and her back stiffened up. David took her hand, “What just happened? What’s going on with you?”

“I just remembered what else Stephen said. God! I wish I remembered it when Chris was being accused of wanting to take down the church!”

“What else did he say?”

“He said that God doesn’t live in houses built by human hands. That He created everything.” She turned to Chris, “I’m sorry that I didn’t remember that. He was saying what others said before him and that God didn’t want building and when Jesus said that Peter was the rock He wasn’t talking a stone one but a living one. He told the people to pray to His Father directly. People use the word church without understanding what Jesus was actually talking about. Ekklesia means ‘the called out ones’ and was about God’s people, not a building. That is exactly what you’ve been saying.”

Chris covered his mouth while he started at Greer. David looked at him, “She’s right. I didn’t remember that either but somehow I knew you were on the right track with what you’ve been saying all along. I mean, if a fire burns down a church, people can still pray on their own. How many churches have had to close and ended up being sold, turned into a house, or office space because people stopped going to them? Safe bet people didn’t think that God died just because their church did. They are all just places and not some kind of super connector to God.”

Bill added, “Just like my Dad and Mandy. They prayed directly to God and didn’t need a church building to do it for them.”

“You’re all right.” He turned to Greer, “That really helped and in a way, I’m glad you didn’t remember it before because that would have reenforced the things I’ve been accused of doing. Now that I know that, I’ll know what to say the next time.”

How could anyone expect someone to seek spiritual healing for PTSD or any other illness, if all they hear are voices condemning them? How can anyone learn how much they are loved by God if they never hear how He created their souls and their bodies are just a vehicle for their souls? Or that they are free to decide for themselves what they do and do not believe?

It is time for the voices of Christians to defend their faith against those who seek to silence them. We should all be tired of them deciding they have the right to decide for everyone else.