Opinion
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May 28, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – While businesses and ordinary Albertans are increasingly feeling the pinch from wave-after-wave of government lockdowns, many of those in the public-sector, whose salaries are assured and whose pensions remain untouched, appear increasingly out-of-touch with the rest of us. Many Albertans feel abandoned, forgotten, left-behind, and alone.

The names of those who have unfortunately died with COVID-19 are read aloud like soldiers’ lives lost in battle – well, not quite, but the overtly public acknowledgement of their deaths certainly seems to pay disproportionate attention to those whose lives have been taken by COVID-19.

And while the 2,000-plus COVID-19 victims rightfully deserve to be mourned, the public acknowledgement of their deaths points to the relatively unacknowledged deaths of the 20,000-plus victims of other causes, natural or not, who have died during this same period from non-COVID related causes. These Albertan’s also deserve to be mourned and their lives are no less – nor more – worthy of attention.

Though still more forgotten are those lives lost who, in most cases, have no name to remember them by. They are the unnamed victims of abortion.

In the past 15 months, since the beginning of the pandemic, six times (6X) as many Albertans have died in the womb by abortion than have died from COVID-19. And unlike other industries in Alberta, the abortion industry has not had to reduce its hours or limit its practice of operations. Abortions continue in Alberta – at the expense of tax-payers – who, as noted, are already feeling the pinch, thanks to the government imposed lockdowns that ordinary Albertans and businesses are required to endure.

So if the current “stop-the-spike” campaign being waged by Alberta’s premier is all about protecting human lives, why has nothing been done to “bend-the-curve” on the killing of preborn Albertans in the womb? In most cases, the loss of these lives is wholly preventable and unnecessary, so much so that abortion is considered an elective procedure, generally touted as a “choice”, rather than as medically necessary.

Some of the strategies employed by governments to reduce transmission rates of COVID-19, and subsequently to reduce deaths from that disease, have been the much decried “lockdown” and “social-distancing” measures we have grown accustomed to in our daily living. Indeed we have become so inured to these rather novel measures that they are often referred to as “the new normal”. And although also now seen as “normal” the “lock-down” and “gathering restrictions” relating to abortion all precede the pandemic by decades. A key difference to these restrictions, however, is that they are applied only toward those who actively object to the loss of life taking place in abortion clinics – rather than in the service of the protection of life (Alberta, like the rest of Canada has no laws limiting abortion).

To be clear, these restrictions have taken place in the form of protest “bubble-zones” which prohibit more than five people from gathering at a time outside abortion clinics. Ironically enough, five is the same number of people currently permitted to attend an outdoor funeral in Alberta (and although I do not think this was deliberate, it certainly drives the point home).

And as if these “gathering restrictions” imposed by the bubble-zones weren’t enough in and of themselves, they are further supplemented by “distancing” rules which prohibit these (again, no more than) five people from coming within 150 meters of an abortion clinic. No group or cause in Alberta faces such harsh legal discrimination on their right to free expression and assembly as pro-life Albertans – who can gather in groups no larger than five, at a distance no closer than 150 meters from an abortuary. 

So while our provincial government castigates those who object to COVID related lockdown measures implemented to “protect [the] lives and livelihoods” of those affected by COVID-19 on the one hand, they continue enforcing restrictions on those who seek the protection of Alberta’s preborn lives from abortion, on the other hand (albeit at the expense of the abortionists’ profits and livelihood).

Richard Dur is, among other things, the executive director of Prolife Alberta – a group of women and men committed to promoting pro-life public policy in Alberta, through politics.