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Cousins divided on abortion find ways to support each other

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

Cousins Kayla Meyers and Tori LaBelle grew up feeling as close as sisters. They were part of a big Catholic family in Pennsylvania, and part of being Catholic meant opposing abortion. But Meyers and LaBelle eventually found themselves on opposite sides of the issue, and they had to figure out how to navigate that difference. As part of our Seeking Common Ground series, Catharine Richert from Minnesota Public Radio News has the story.

CATHARINE RICHERT, BYLINE: Kayla Meyers distinctly remembers the chaos of growing up alongside lots of cousins, specifically girl cousins.

KAYLA MEYERS: It's just, like, a big, noisy family, and so Christmas was always just all of us in Grandma and Pop's basement and just, like, wrapping-paper chaos.

RICHERT: Like her cousins, Meyers was a pretty devout Catholic. She went to mass regularly and took part in the March for Life. That's the annual anti-abortion rights march in Washington, D.C. But by college, Meyers was having doubts about everything.

MEYERS: My relationship with my views on abortion has evolved completely in tandem with my relationship with organized religion. When one shook, the other shook inherently.

RICHERT: Meyers came to believe that the decision about whether to end a pregnancy should be up to a woman and her doctor. And one particular statistic really shaped her view. Six in 10 women seeking abortions have had at least one other child, so there are likely other children at home. That really hit home when she became a mom herself and suffered from postpartum depression.

MEYERS: It is very, very hard to navigate being pregnant, having children and being postpartum.

RICHERT: Meyers now lives in a Minneapolis suburb and fully supports abortion rights. On paper, at least, this puts her at odds with one of those girl cousins she was so tight with growing up, Tori LaBelle.

TORI LABELLE: My pro-life opinion is that, regardless of a woman's situation or any prenatal diagnosis - that every person has dignity at the moment of fertilization, and the gift of life deserves to be protected.

RICHERT: LaBelle, who now lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is against abortion under all circumstances. LaBelle learned that she and her cousin Kayla were no longer seeing things the same way about a decade ago. It was Christmas, the usual raucous scene at the grandparents' house. And that year, some of the girl cousins' gifts to each other were donations to a favorite charity. LaBelle opened her envelope, and she saw that Meyers had donated to Planned Parenthood in all of her cousins' names.

LABELLE: And I was like, OK, this is how I know. Like, I'm sure there could've been plenty of other people in our family that could've blew up Christmas and it be ruined, but, you know, Kayla and I have a relationship that's not built on that.

RICHERT: It took a while, but Meyers and LaBelle, who are about three years apart, eventually started having pretty deep conversations about abortion, and they found a lot of common ground.

LABELLE: Kayla and I completely agree. We look at a woman in a crisis pregnancy and who's thinking of choosing abortion, and we're saying, I am so sorry you're in this spot. I wish that you could be in a spot where taking on kids was a joy, and you had community support and support from your family and support from society and your government and you were able to afford all those things.

RICHERT: And LaBelle says, as a mom of four kids, it pains her to imagine mothers who are already maxed out facing an unexpected pregnancy.

LABELLE: Anybody who's had to wake up at 2 a.m. and then 2:15 and then 2:20 - yes. You are dying to yourself for your child. You're saying, what I want right now or what I need - physical need, sleep - is being denied to care for this child. And to know that there are mothers who have done that and say, I can't sacrifice anymore - that hurts so bad.

RICHERT: LaBelle and Meyers regularly talk about abortion, and they check in on each other if they think something might rattle the other person. And that's exactly what happened when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Meyers was gutted. LaBelle was relieved, but they leaned on each other to talk about what needed to come next.

LABELLE: Affordable health care, affordable child care, you know, paid parental leave for mothers and fathers - lots of government programs but also nonprofit support.

MEYERS: Hearing Tori say, like, I hear the responsibility that comes with the Supreme Court decision - like, I appreciated that someone was seeing it because there's about to be babies in this world. They are going to be born in situations where parents would have said, I can't have a child in this moment.

RICHERT: The cousins say that the way politicians talk about abortion washes over so much of the nuance that they experience in their conversations. Here's Meyers again.

MEYERS: This disagreement isn't sport. It's not Vikings, Packers. It is people's lives.

RICHERT: Meyers and LaBelle know they're not going to change each other's minds about abortion, but they feel like listening to each other will help them work together to support parents and children.

For NPR News, I'm Catharine Richert in St. Paul, Minnesota. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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