Virginia's fees for "Choose Life" license plates are being used to fund so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" and the State forbids that a dime of these funds go to any non-profit agency that even hints that any pregnant woman consider an abortion.

Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, introduced this legislation when he was a State Senator; Delegate Dick Black filed an earlier version of this bill but his legislative tenure was cut short after (among other things) he circulated pink plastic fetuses in the General Assembly.

We should all be able to agree that a belief that "life" begins with a fecundated ovum or blastocyte is a religious belief, constituting a definition of life that is not found at law.

When the Commonwealth, at Cuccinelli's urging, codified this religious belief into state law, required state action to protect and preserve and underwrite this religious belief and partly funded centers to implement them, the Commonwealth was (and is) party to "establishing religion" in violation of the First Amendment (as applied to the several states by the Fourteenth Amendment).

Nor is this constitutional objection all that is wrong here. Many of the Centers are apparently more concerned with compromising a woman's constitutional privacy right to choose an abortion, rather than rendering fair and accurate medical advice.

An investigative report issued earlier this year, titled, "Crisis Pregnancy Centers Revealed," conducted by the NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia Foundation, found that 38 of the 52 centers in Virginia are not medically-licensed, have no medically trained or medically supervised personnel on staff, and misinform the young women who seek counseling, about infertility, fetal development, sexually transmitted infections, contraception, pregnancy and abortion, thus putting these women at risk.

(Read the report for yourself at -http://www.naralva.org/assets/files/cpcsrevealed.pdf )

More specifically, investigators found 18 of these centers gave misleading advice as to contraception including that "all condoms have flaws or holes …". 17 of these centers reportedly misled other women about cancer including that the "risk of breast cancer almost doubles after one abortion and rises even further with two or more abortions." 24 of these centers allegedly misled other women with false and misleading "advice" about psychological effects including that "Women will commit suicide post-abortion."

Attorney General Cuccinelli has an opportunity and a duty to clean up the mess he created by investigating what's gone awry. He should issue a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to each and every one of these centers that received funds to find out whether they are making these misleading statements to pregnant women, invoking his authority under the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayer Act (found at Virginia Code Section 8.01-216.1).

Those who are "pro life" may tell the world about it. But we can't have the state underwriting the "telling" of that religious belief.