3Pairs12, you have just illustrated precisely why such cases as this must NOT be used to change or even influence public policy or law. There is a reason we have a written Constitution and it is that a written document stands above the messy and often excruciating events of human life, keeping the principles upon which a free and just society is founded safe from manipulation by evil.
In saying what you did, you have announced to the world the exact lever needed to move you in whatever way someone wants. Whatever you have that they want: money, your wife, your vote, the exercise of whatever authority you possess in a certain way - all they have to do is capture and threaten a child and you will give them what they want.
If it were my child, that's probably what I'd want you to do, but that doesn't make it right, because to live that way is to GRANT EVIL A VETO OVER THE GOOD. There is good in our system of liberties and self-government, even as strained as it is in the current political environment. No other means of ordering society has EVER been invented that comes close to it as a way of preserving the worth and dignity and freedom of its citizens.
As painful as it is in the moment, that IS worth more than the life of any single person, even a little child; it is why we honor soldiers who risk and sometimes give their lives to defend it.
And in this case, giving in to the demand for the surrender of rights for which people bled and died would solve nothing for those children - it will not bring them back.
