Rest in peace, Dr Tiller and God bless the people of our country who depended on your dedication and service.

Terrorism is terrorism, and terrorists are terrorists, right?

Will Bill O'Reilly get waterboarded?

Are they going to confiscate all the assets of Catholic charities?

What about the President of the Mormon Church? Does he get extraordinary rendition?

"Harsh interrogation" for Right to Life?

Gitmo for the "Crisis Pregnancy Centers"?

I'm really looking forward to the deafening silence from the Dick and George Fan Club on this one. Hypocrites and moral cowards every one of them.

Killing someone is murder, but doing it at a church is terrorism and the whole point of the murder was to make a political statement.

The murder is an act of political terrorism and should be dealt with not only as the killing of a human being, but an attack on society in general. This murder was propaganda and it was born of propaganda from the news media and more than a few religious institutions.

Now the real question is what terrorist cell supported, trained and programmed the assassin? Who was connected to this and are there any connections with other cases such as Eric Rudolph.

Even lone nuts have a support team. We have our own Taliban. Too bad that's the way we like it. Can you blame people on the other side of the world for doing the same?

The sad thing is that they're not only terrorists but extremely successful terrorists. They're getting exactly what they want - abortion is harder to access every year, particularly the kind of late term abortion that Dr. Tiller performed.

The fact that the media is reporting this as a murder rather than an assassination pretty much confirms that in this case the terrorists are winning.

I am in favor of the Taliban taking over Afcrackistan. I am in favor of creating political autonomous zones in the US as well. Create an autonomous region called "Gilead" or something where far right wing religio-fundamentalist fascism rules.

Oh right, he's too busy giving the catholics a 2/3's majority on the Supreme Court so they can outlaw abortion all together.

Eric Holder today ordered US Marshalls to protect abortion clinics. I presume Dr. Hern will be among those. What kind of a country requires US Marshalls to protect *doctors* performing legal procedures?

Small point--Dr. Carhart (of Stenberg v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Carhart) is a Nebraska doctor. The linked article was contrasting the run-down state of Carhart's clinic, the result of his myriad legal difficulties keeping his clinic running, and that of the new clinic in Aurora, IL where they had to mask the identity of the client when obtaining permits.

I don't know about the War for Oil as an expression of national fascism; that seems to be the province of the Republicans who ran the country in the previous two terms. For the most part, except for times when Americans were truly angry at other nations, the people of this country don't care about attacking anyone.

But within our borders, among our own people, I've seen Americans applying fascistic solutions to problems. Shoot a doctor that performs abortions. Bomb the Olympics. Drag a gay man behind a pickup until he dies. Picket funerals, not because the dead person did anything wrong personally, but because it's a great way to terrify and punish the public for not marching in lockstep behind your religious beliefs. And keep your spirit bolstered in these actions by drug-addled radio hosts.

It would be far too easy to say these beliefs were caused by a cross wrapped in a flag. I think they've been boiling in our culture for a long time. The main male partners in Planet Hollywood made their fortunes playing characters that ignore and despise law, morality and basic politeness to get what they want. Since the 60's certain country songs have protested bussing for schools (covert racism) and "painted-up, powdered-up" women (covert sexism).

Those people who complain about these trends when these horrible demonstrations appear, and that includes a lot of the columnists on Salon as well as bloggers elsewhere, simply complain. They have no effective way to counter American fascism, so they hang their heads and they cry. A few satirists (Stewart and Colbert being the most famous) are about the only effective counterforces. Serious, sorrowful columnists are only effective in making other people feel powerless in the face of American goose-stepping over other Americans.

What should we be doing? I'm a 41 yo female who never thought I'd live in a country this close to shutting down reproductive freedom. And yes - it does make me want to cry. I'm especially frustrated that young women want to talk about nuance and morality and ethics of reproductive choices rather than taking to the streets. It's very slim comfort to know that they will be certain to regret it when they can't get birth control any longer (let alone safely and legally end a pregnancy.) The reproductive choice movement has horrible PR - and we can't win against people who make it their life's mission to terrorize us. (maybe because we are sane and busy and happy living lives and raising kids and having better things to do with our time than worrying about people's choices.)

I've said for years that the best revenge upon on control freak is to give them control. Let's put a 3 year moratorium on ALL abortions for all reasons. Assuming that all resulting children can be freely handed over to the state with no bureaucratic paperwork of any kind (Dickensian drop off orphanages) for state paid-for rearing and support 100% through age 18. Also let's ban all other forms of birth control.

The nutters will call for abortions en mass faster than you can say 'tax hike'. Or, they won't and America will become the backwards festering hell hole they always wanted it to be. Either way, it's a win win.

"The nutters will call for abortions en mass faster than you can say 'tax hike'. Or, they won't and America will become the backwards festering hell hole they always wanted it to be. Either way, it's a win win."

Except for the women and girls who will die in back alley "clinics", and kids who will suffer. Hoping this is Swiftian deep sarcasm, but have read enough of your letters to think that women just vulnerable people might just not ... matter... to you.

They matter to me. So do my rights. So do the rights of all people - men and women - who support and rely on safe reproductive options.