Life or Death....which is really worse?

We have both read Euripides' "Trojan Women" and watched a portion of it on film in class. After doing so, one of the things that the class took from the play is that the worst thing that one can go through is the sacrifice of a child. I am not sure that I agree with this notion, and I feel like it is something that is somewhat contradictory in the text.

I am not heartless, seeing Hecuba in her state of grief was heart wrenching and I most definitely sympathised with her. It would be extremely hard to lose a child much less numerous children. Something that did really bother me about her character though, is her blatant disregard for her people. As a queen, she should consider all of her subjects to be like children, yet she does not even think once about them while she grieves. Hecuba just sits there and wails in self pity without even a thought for the rest of her people who are going through the same thing. Going back to the original topic, when Andromache is forced to give up her child to be sacrificed, it is again terrible. In fact, I would say that being forced to choose the death of your child would be much more difficult than just losing them. However, I feel like in certain situations, such as that presented in The Trojan Women, perhaps death would be a better alternative than life.

Hecuba: Ah, my child! Brutally butchered! Ah and again ah! How shameful a death.
Andromache: She died as she died.--And yet in death she was luckier that I who live.
Hecuba: Death and life are not the same, my child. Death is nothingness; in life there is hope.
Andromache: The dead, I say, are as if they had not been born. It is better to die than to live in pain; the dead have no sorrows to hurt them, but when a man passes from happiness to misery his heart hankers restlessly after the joys he once knew. Polyxena is dead as if she had never seen this life; she knows nothing of her sorrows.

In reading this conversation, it would seem that Andromache would welcome death. Although she would not want to personally inflict it on her son I'm sure, it seems that she might feel as if it were for the best. With his death, he no longer has to face the horrors of life. His father has died, his mother is distraught, and if he were to live he would be brought up by his enemies. In some ways, I feel like this would be a worse fate than death, and Andromache indicates that she does as well when referring to Hecuba's daughter Polyxena. Had she lived, the horrors that she had faced thus far would be just the beginning. Women who were taken after war were either kept as slaves or concubines. Either life would be a terrible one, not to mention that your master would be your enemy and the man who had killed numerous members of your family and people. As for the shame that Hecuba talks about in the death of her daughter, would it not be worse if she had to serve as another man's prostitute. It seems like the shame in losing your virginity too, as well as continuously sleeping with, someone who killed those close to you would be more shameful.

Andromache seems to change her stance on the whole thing when it is her child that must die. Rather than seeing the good as she did in the death of Polyxena, she only sees the bad. She curses Odysseus and wishes for the same thing to happen to his children. I found this contradiction interesting, and am not sure what stance I myself would have taken. While now I believe that the death of my child would be much more forgiving and less horrific than the life that they would live in captivity under enemy rule, one can never say how they would really feel until they actually experience it for themselves. I think that that is why Andromache does contradict herself. While looking at someone else's child she can see the good, but the thought of loosing her own is overwhelming and she can not see past her sorrow.