Economics used to justify death penalty

In response to the recent letter ("Indiana should keep juveniles off death row," Sept. 18) on the death penalty for minors by Christy Campoll and Bill Breeden:\nThe death penalty is a symptom, much as abortion is, of the idea that the human being has a finite worth rather than an infinite value. The materialism of our culture views everything in terms of money, with the result that human beings that cost money to support (or who are viewed not to contribute sufficiently to the economic growth of society) are not considered to be worth as much as those who are viewed as self-sufficient contributors.\nIn a very real sense, child labor laws paved the way for abortion in this country by making the idea of children an economic liability rather than a source of income, a cost rather than a source of wealth. Similarly, laws that make prisoners more expensive (laws that allow appeals or are perceived to make lives too easy for the prisoners without squeezing economic benefits for the state out of their existence) contribute to a lot of peoples' support for the death penalty. \nIndeed, I recall that my fifth grade teacher was in support of the death penalty those many years ago because she did not feel the state should have to spend money supporting murderers. While not everyone will be as up-front about their reasons for both abortion and the death penalty, economic concerns are probably a justifying principle in peoples' minds for both evils.\nNeither abortion nor the death penalty can exist within a society where people are viewed as infinitely valuable, apart from their crimes or economic cost. In a society in which so many millions of children have already died through abortion for "economic reasons," it should be no surprise that the state would extend such a thing to a boy who has himself committed murder. That does not, however, make it any less tragic. \nMatthew Minix\nAlumnus