How do women navigate being pro-choice or pro-life when their experiences and faith shape the stakes differently?
Central Florida Public Media and StoryCorps are bringing together strangers with differing political views for guided One Small Step conversations.
Marlena Mutter, 22, is pro-choice.
Mary Connolly, 20, is pro-life.
Their Catholic faith unites them, but it hasn’t led them to the same place, until today.
“If I'm being honest, there was a point in time where, for a while, I was denying myself a sense of religion and belief, because I associated these beliefs with such a judgmental, hateful worldview,” Mutter said. “But taking some space from it for a couple years and coming back to it, I realize that I can believe what I want politically but still rely on this faith to center me and give me a sense of community.”
“I think it's very important to be grounded in faith, because it's very powerful and gives us that mindset," Connolly said. “That's something that people on both the left and the right can do.”
“I'm just so glad we have that unite us,” Mutter said.
Meet Marlena Mutter
Marlena Mutter is now a senior college student studying biology at the University of Central Florida.
But just before her high school prom, she found out she was pregnant.
“I was just in my bathroom, and I was like, I'm not gonna sit here and cry about this. I'm going to go get a job and order a Plan C online and do what I have to do,” Mutter said. “I was about to start college, I was not in a place to have a child.”
Mutter started working at an Italian restaurant, earning good tips and saving enough for the pill. But before it even arrived in the mail, she said she began to notice something felt off.
“I started to get this pain in my uterus,” she said. “A couple days pass and it's still there, and I start coming in and out of consciousness with the amount of blood loss I was having, and I was like, this is not normal.”
So she said she drove herself to the emergency room, and it was there that her doctor pronounced the pregnancy as ectopic.
“Ultimately an ectopic pregnancy is non-viable, there's no way to make an ectopic pregnancy viable, it will die, and it's just a matter of if it's gonna pass without harming the mother, or if it's gonna pass and take a chunk of the mother's uterus with it,” Mutter said. “I got very lucky there were no major complications.”
She said once she realized that if the abortion ban passed in Florida and she really did need a life-saving operation, they would’ve had to wait until she was on the brink of septic shock.
Mutter said that since the election, she has sought to tell her story and fight for abortion access.
“I feel more aware of the things that women in this country have to go through,” she said. “You know, God, ultimately, he has these things happen to us for a reason. I believe and I trust in him that this happened for a reason.”
Meet Mary Connolly
Mary Connolly is also a student at the University of Central Florida, she’s a sophomore studying biology with plans to go to law school.
She was formally the president of the UCF College Republicans, and held a leadership position within the campus’ Catholic ministry.
Although now an Ocala resident, she grew up in New Hampshire, where she said she had to keep her conservative views to herself.
“When people found out that I was conservative, they would make a lot of assumptions and based on that, I just wouldn't tell anybody that I was conservative,” she said. “I kind of got used to just, you know, being kind of in the closet about it.”
Even in Florida, she said her conservative beliefs continued to draw out criticism from fellow students.
"I was actually tabling with the College Republicans a few days after the (2024) election, and I remember a girl coming up to me; she was like, 'How could you do this?'" You're a woman?" she said. “I definitely felt misunderstood, because a lot of people were telling me, ‘You hate women; you voted to take everyone's rights away,’ and I don’t think like that at all.”
Connolly said that, despite common assumptions, her political beliefs are rooted in faith, tradition, and family, most notably the example set by her mother. She said that her mom has taught her many things, including how to love.
“I think knowing how to love is important in every context of life, outside of interpersonal relationships, and just seeing my mom, and you know how she loves me, and my relationship really taught me how to spread that love to other people as well,” she said.
Connolly said with this in mind, she hopes people can step outside their echo chamber and listen to those with different beliefs.
“I think having conversations like this is very valuable,” she said. “And squashing those assumptions and kind of seeing that we're all people in the end.”
The Takeaway
Mutter asked Connolly what she meant by her pro-life stance, if she meant it for herself, or for everyone.
Without hesitation, Connolly answered.
“I think one of the core teachings of the Catholic faith is to be pro life for everyone,” she said.
Connolly attends the March for Life event every year in Washington D.C., an annual rally and march against the practice and legality of abortion.
However, after Mutter shared her experience with an ectopic pregnancy, Connolly said she didn’t change her beliefs, but gained a deeper understanding.
“Just hearing a story like yours definitely expanded my understanding of pro-choice and why people believe what they do,” Connolly said. “I've met a lot of pro choice people, especially when I was younger, they were a little more black and white about it.”
In this moment, it seemed like you could see the preconceptions they had about one another shift.
“It's like a person with, like, a chainsaw, almost, it's so delicate of a subject, and there's so many people's lives and mental well being on the line,” Mutter said. “Truly, like a scalpel precision is needed to delve into this issue.”
“You know, it comes back to my Catholic faith, just, believing the dignity of all life, but also that includes the mother's life as well,” Connolly said. “The core of being pro-life is being supportive of the mother and what she's going through, kind of just walking with her.”
“I mean, it's in the name, it's like being pro-life for both lives,” Mutter said. “I really, really appreciate that.”
