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It was religious leaders who led the effort to abolish racial segregation. Will history credit medical professionals with bringing about the abolition of capital punishment?

Many religious leaders continue to speak out against the barbarism of capital punishment. Here in North Carolina, People of Faith Against the Death Penalty proves that the clergy (and laity) have not been silent on this issue.

This time, it may be the doctors of medicine, in addition to the doctors of theology, who cause millions of people to think in moral terms about the brutality of capital punishment.

The North Carolina Medical Board has come under fire from right-wingers for its January decision to warn doctors that they would face discipline if they assisted executions. State law has required the presence of a doctor in the execution chamber. State Sen. Phil Berger was quoted last week as saying, “It seems to me that the law of North Carolina, under which the board exists, is superior to the pronouncements of the board.”

Any draft-time conscientious objector will tell you that the law must sometimes make provision for moral opposition to legal requirements. If this moral opposition is coming from nearly every medical association on the state and national levels (including even the Society of Correctional Physicians), then clearly this is a case where our state government must acknowledge that executions are so morally repugnant that doctors must not participate.

Without a doctor present, the courts say that there is no way to kill citizens and still stay within the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The national debate suddenly raging over lethal injection may concentrate on just one method of killing, but it speaks to problems with the whole machinery of death.