I need an explanation

When children's lives are at stake, writes Index Editor Gerald Harris, does it make a difference the context that places them in danger? SCREEN GRAB/CNN

Witnesses stated and worldwide media reported that warplanes attacked the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northwestern Syria last Tuesday morning, April 4, dropping chemical munitions on a one-story building.

When medics arrived on the scene 20 minutes later they found people, many of them children with constricted pupils, blue facial skin and lips, severe shortness of breath and asphyxiation. News sources indicated at least 89 were killed, including 33 children and 18 women. Another 541 people were injured.

Sarin, a highly toxic chemical considered 20 times as deadly as cyanide, was used. Knowledgeable people say sarin is a colorless and tasteless liquid that deactivates signals that cause human nerve cells to fire. It can lead to death via asphyxiation within minutes.

It was not the first time Syria had used chemical munitions against their own people. They were reportedly used during the final stages of the battle for control of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo last autumn.

Why would Syria use such a brutal means of exterminating its own people? Bashar al-Assad is apparently a paranoid leader who has imposed a policy of seeking total victory by making life as miserable as possible for anyone living in areas outside his control.

The New York Times reported, “ Government forces have been herding defeated opponents from across the country into Idlib Province, where the chemical attack occurred.” In other words, the people in this particular province had opposed the al-Assad regime, were under strict scrutiny, and considered dispensable or liabilities.

The current United States presidential administration concluded that al-Assad’s action to use chemical warfare was so reprehensible that retaliation was a justifiable response. Therefore, the president authorized U.S. warships launch 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airbase serving as home to the warplanes that carried out the chemical attacks. One missile misfired; the others met their target.

I would be grateful if someone could tell me the difference in Bashar al-Assad’s chemical warfare that mercilessly killed innocent people – including many children – and the pro-abortionists and their slaughter of innocent children in the womb.

You may rationalize, speculate, or hypothesize, but the truth is there isn’t much difference. Life begins at conception and the slaughter of children in or out of the womb cannot be justified, whether it happens in al Assad’s Syria or America’s medical clinics and hospitals.

You ask, “What about a woman’s rights?” She has rights. She has the right to choose sexual abstinence outside marriage. She has the right to choose normal contraceptive methods. Beyond that a woman has no reproductive rights without violating the rights of another human being.

For those women who have had an abortion there is the provision of forgiveness, peace, and forgiveness through the grace of God in Christ Jesus.