As I read it, abortion splits people in all parties , and many famiies. In fact a lot of individual people feel pretty divided in themselves about it.

The balance of opinion is maybe different in the diffeent parties, but that's contingent, it's not a real political difference. The same goes about most things, taxes, public services, foreign policy. The parties act like they're polarised in opposite extremes, but they overlap so much. They're really just different wings of the same party, sparring partners, who keep each other in business and marginalise any real opposition in the process.

And I could as easily be talking about England here as the USA. Except that I think maybe over there more people take the shadow boxing as serious.

As I said, none of that is to say that they don't quite sincerely hate each other. I just don't believe that the real hate is preferentially directed at political opponents. (And this week's feeding frenzy in the British press around Mandelson bears it out - though I don't expect the US papers have got round to taking much notice of that, reasonably enough.)