I didn't see any women or children on the Death Star in the films. Please stop only using the EU when it is convenient to your point. Either use it or don't.

The Death Star was a military weapon with a military purpose, manned by military personnel and in military service. It was therefore a military target. In a war, a military target is a much more acceptable thing to attack than is a civilian target.

Many ships were sunk during World War I, but none of them made half as much news as did the Lusitania. That's because the navy ships were acceptable military targets, and thus acceptable casualties of war, no matter how many of the men had families; where as the Lusitania was an unacceptable civilian target and this an unacceptable innocent casualty.

You don't just help enemy combatants to escape. The point is to defeat the enemy, and when they are about to blow your planet up, you don't stop to evacuate everyone while they blow your base up in the meantime; you kill them as quick as you can to save your friends. Beyond that, every single person on board the Death Star at Yavin was complicit in the destruction of Alderaan, making them all war criminals; women and children, drafted soldiers or contractors. There was not one innocent person on that station.