Well, Joe, as a heterosexual fellow with children and a grandchild, who is married and who does not go out on Sundays wearing frocks, I think it's a bit rich to tell me that I don't "understand" the Pope. In fact, I feel that popes in general don't understand women very much at all. I wonder why not. Well, actually, no I don't. And if I understand the sentiment of your penultimate paragraph, well I'm afraid that it's a cardinal example of the emotional mush I was referring to. That kind of argument gets us precisely nowhere. The only way we will ever get abortion numbers down is to ditch the emotion, ditch the preaching, ditch the moralising and get practical and hard-headed. I gloomily predict that this thread will go the same way as every other abortion thread and it will be all your fault. I wanted to kick it off on a practical tack rather than a moral one, but hey ho. It was worth a try. As a last-ditch attempt, can I invite you to condemn the antediluvian attitude of your church and of the extreme right in your country, both of which promote ignorance, "abstinence", lack of education and the proscribing of contraception and contraceptive advice? It's your club. What are you going to do about it?