For many Missouri Catholics, abortion rights means choosing between faith, politics

"Nun" was pretty low on the list of Sister Barbara's early career options.

"I certainly did not intend to become a sister," she says recently, standing outside her modest Missouri apartment in jeans and a sweatshirt. She grew up Catholic but didn't think much about it.

Then in her early 20s, she fell into a kind of love affair with Catholicism. With its emphasis on serving the poor and the social justice issues of the day, Sister Barbara says, the faith broadened her mind "and was a whole new idea for me about what religious life was really about."

But those ideals that drew her in, she says, are no longer in line with the directives she sees from today's Catholic leadership around abortion and reproductive rights. She doesn't agree with the church's position that abortion is a sin and should be illegal.

"I just don't see it in those