Regarding the Dec. 23 AP article "U.S. may up child custody pressure": While I fully agree with the rights of a child to live with both parents, I have a few questions for the author of this article. How can a non-U.S. parent become an outlaw and an abductor just because she does not obey a U.S. court order that goes against her sense of motherhood? And how can the author refer to a country as "outlaw" just because it exercises its sovereignty by maintaining its own laws on this issue?

I would also like to know if the author has ever taken into consideration the points raised by the so-called outlaw mothers in Japan? In fact, many of them are not "abducting" their children "for fun"; instead they may be running away from a kind of prison camp run by their husbands. Inhuman treatment, domestic violence, infidelity by the husband and many other reasons that a wife or mother cannot stand are why many of these so-called abductors run back to their homeland. Nor would a mother like it if her husband came home with a gay partner. The mothers could also fear that the husband could be a potential threat to her daughters' safety.

The article, as is, is misleading and without merit. The author should try rewriting it and add detailed interviews with those mothers to whom he referred as abductors.

nandakumar janardhanan