For some unclear reason, an anti-choice organization is promoting a “Day of Silence” for high school students in late October. The idea is that fetuses have been “silenced” by being aborted, so anti-choice students should be silent “out of solidarity” . . . whatever that means.

Sounds good to me. They ought to make it year-round. More silence is better from this group.

It’s odd that the promotional image shows a young person with tape over her mouth, emblazoned “Silenced”. Since they’re doing this of their own accord, they’ve hardly been silenced - they’ve just chosen, uncharacteristically, to finally shut up. That is, they’ve exercised their autonomy to make their own choice. But irony was never a strong point of the anti-choice right.

However, it occurs to me that those who favor freedom might as well make the most of this opportunity. Use October 25th (the appointed “Day of Silence”) to make an extra effort to talk up autonomy, freedom, and the importance of reproductive choice - when the anti-choicers can’t respond! Think of it as their gift to getting the pro-choice message out without interruption!

I hereby nominate the Day of Silence as “The Day to Speak Out for Choice”.