(Fox news) RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Attorney General Ken
Cuccinelli said on a radio program Wednesday that going to jail may be an
effective way to protest a mandate tied to ObamaCare that requires employers to
provide contraceptive coverage.
Appearing on on Iowa conservative radio host Steve Deace's syndicated show,
the Republican gubernatorial candidate said civil disobedience is one way to
attack the federal health care law's requirement.
The so-called contraceptive mandate is now being challenged in a federal
lawsuit by the Hobby Lobby stores. The company is primarily concerned about
coverage for the morning-after pill, which some consider an abortion-causing
drug.
Cuccinelli called the mandate an attack on the Roman Catholic Church and
religious freedom and suggested that opponents fight back by forcing the feds to
crack down on those who don't comply.
Cuccinelli, who is Catholic, said he had spoken to a bishop who suggested
he'd go to jail to protest it.
"My local bishop said he told a group, `Well, you know, I told a group I'm
ready to go to jail,' and I told him, `Bishop, don't take this personally - you
need to go to jail," Cuccinelli said, trying to balance levity with
seriousness.
Hobby Lobby and Mardel Inc., a religious book seller owned by the same
conservative Christian family, plan to defy the federal health care law that
requires employee health care plans to provide insurance coverage for the
morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception. The company risks fines
up to $1.3 million a day.
The companies are suing to block the requirement in the federal law, claiming
it violates their owners' religious beliefs. They say the morning-after pill is
tantamount to abortion because it can prevent a fertilized egg from becoming
implanted in a woman's womb.
In three years as attorney general, Cuccinelli has pursued aggressive efforts
to restrict abortion in Virginia. Last year, Cuccinelli forced the State Board
of Health to reverse a decision to exempt existing abortion clinics from a new
law that required them to meet the same architectural standards as new hospitals
by saying the board overstepped its bounds and refusing to certify the board's
regulations.
He was also the first state attorney general to file a federal lawsuit
challenging the constitutionality of the 2010 federal health care reforms. In
September 2011, a federal appeals court rejected Virginia's challenge to the
law, saying that the state didn't have the right to bring a lawsuit.
In his interview with Deace, Cuccinelli said employers who want to challenge
the law may have to make the hard decision to go to jail to "provide an example
of what tyranny means when it's played to its logical conclusion."
"Abraham Lincoln has many good quotes, but one of them is `The best way to
get rid of a bad law is to enforce it vigorously," Cuccinelli said on the show,
which is carried in several states.
Democrats and abortion-rights groups blasted Cuccinelli starting Wednesday
evening after Politico reported Cuccinelli's comments from the night before.
"For Virginia's chief legal officer to suggest that citizens break the law is
not only reckless, it's dangerous," said Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring, who
is running for the office Cuccinelli will vacate.
NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, the foremost reproductive rights lobby in
Richmond, tweeted: "Ken Cuccinelli thinks ppl (people) should go to jail to
oppose better access to birth control. And he wants to be our Gov?!"
Efforts to mandate vaginally invasive ultrasound exams before all abortions
produced angry state Capitol protests in Richmond last winter and subjected
Cuccinelli, Gov. Bob McDonnell and other Republicans in an election year to
nationwide unfavorable headlines and ridicule by television
comedians.
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