As you say kat, it's "difficult for men to understand what a woman goes through...", and it's also difficult to appreciate what it's like having had someone you love murdered, if we haven't experienced that.

And what that means is that those of us who can't understand, because of that difficulty, should refrain from making judgements about people we don't understand, and their beliefs.

But it doesn't mean that we don't have a right and a duty to reach our own conclusions about what is right and what is wrong, even when we aren't in those situations ourselves. And it is pretty clear that, when it comes to issues around abortion, there are women who reach different conclusions, and the same goes for relatives of murder victims in relation to capital punishment.

It occurs to me that there is a significant difference between the context in which we are arguing - in the USA the question of the legality of abortion is very much a live issue; in the UK it isn't really any more. The question isn't so much about "the right to choose", but rather about what makes a choice right or wrong.