GUEST: Of course mailing anthrax to an abortion clinic is terrorism (as is the act of making threats to mail it); no one said it wasn't terrorism.

Now, about killing women: "with impunity" means "with exemption or freedom from punishment, harm or loss"; the only murderers in the US who are not punished are the ones who haven't been caught or who have abused the government's legal system in order to get away with their murders. This is not at all the same thing as having the government support and even perform the murders (e.g. the Taliban arranging for its agents to run airliners into buildings full of people). I don't see a double standard. If and when the people who sent anthrax through the US mail are caught, there will be no impunity for them regardless of the destination of their letters.

Celtic Soul (re the US vs. repressive fundamentalist Muslim nations): Hear, hear! Let's not forget about the forced castration of female children in many countries. How repressive is THAT – to be so concerned that a woman not be tempted to stray from her husband that men are willing to risk the deaths of their young daughters, just for the sake of taking away any chance these girls might have of ever experiencing pleasure in intimacy.

And, of course, girls have no say in the choice of their husbands; they're just traded off for as much merchandise as their fathers can get for them, while the safety (from abuse) of the young women in their future homes is not of primary concern.

So females in these repressive nations are not even safe at home. The hell with all the rhetoric about how women have to hide their faces because they are prized like pearls; they're treated worse than cattle, and apparently considered less valuable.

Yep, the US ain't perfect, but it's preferable to some places. I'm not sure what GUEST's point is. Yes, we have zealots here who are willing to terrorize and kill abortionists for their beliefs, but again, they are acting outside the law. The zealots will quote statistics to support the view that each abortion is a legally-sanctioned murder. Other zealots will say that contraception is murder-before-the-fact. Yes, it's true that the US is not a safe place for some of the embryos and fetuses of irresponsible women who can't say "no" to casual sex, but if the alternative is to have the government say "no" to so much more, and to say it for ALL women, I'll still take the US.