A bill which would bar doctors from participating in executions cleared the Assembly Business and Professions Committee yesterday.

The powerful doctors’ lobby, the California Medical Association, has sponsored legislation, AB 1954 by Assemblyman Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, that would prohibit the state from using licensed physicians in an execution.

The bill cleared the Assembly Business and Professions Committee with a bare majority, but only after an initial critic reluctantly voted for the measure just before the panel adjourned.

The measure still must pass the Appropriations Committee to reach the Assembly floor. The bill has not yet been heard in the state Senate. (San Diego U-T 4/18/06)

Is this really what we need the legislature to be doing?  Seriously, isn’t there something better.  Listen, I am personally against the death penalty.  I would hope that we as a society have evolved past that.  But, even if we haven’t, does the Legislature really need to start telling doctors what to do.  I’ll let Joe Canciamilla make the case:

But Assemblyman Joe Canciamilla, D-Pittsburg, pointedly asked Hertzka why it was necessary to enact a state law to protect doctors from something they cannot be forced to do anyhow.

“You are asking the state Legislature to tell doctors that they are now prohibited as a matter of state law, from participating in a particular activity,” Canciamilla said.

“Once you open that door . . . where do you individually draw the line because I can see a lot of other people marching in here suggesting that (other) activities be prohibited.”

Canciamilla offered abortion as an example. Assemblyman Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, warned that a simmering debate over the legalization of assisted suicide also could become entangled in the precedent that would be set.

And the best the Doctors’ Association can come up with is that it’s not medical?

But, he argued, “once you think about it, there is nothing medical about an execution.”

The Morales case has “thrust physicians in the middle of this, and we’re proactively saying we don’t want to be a part of it,” Hertzka explained.

Yes, it’s not medical.  But, there are already ways to avoid having to do this.  The state should not be telling doctors how to practice.  The precedent this sets is terrible.  Do we really want to start regulating this?  How do we argue against abortion regulation?  It just is not a place to put any “political capital” as a progressive.