RICHMOND, Virginia, Jan. 11, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Virginia’s strongly pro-life Attorney General is urging citizens to be ready to go to jail as a protest against the Obama administration’s HHS mandate.
Ken Cuccinelli, who is running for governor in 2013, told Iowa radio host Steve Deace on Wednesday that civil disobedience would expose the “tyranny” behind the mandate.
“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,” said Cuccinelli.
If citizens were jailed, the official continued, it would “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,’” he added.
Predictably, abortion advocates slammed the comments. Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring, who is running for Attorney General in 2013, said, “For Virginia’s chief legal officer to suggest that citizens break the law is not only reckless, it’s dangerous.”
NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia tweeted: “Ken Cuccinelli thinks ppl (people) should go to jail to oppose better access to birth control. And he wants to be our Gov?!”
Cuccinelli’s comments came as craft supplier Hobby Lobby has faced fines up to $1.3 million per day since the mandate came into force for them Jan. 1st.
The Christian-run company announced they would defy the mandate, which forces company’s to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilizations, after Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor denied their emergency appeal for a temporary reprieve.
The mandate faces over 40 separate lawsuits.