OP-ED: Celebrated on January 1, ignored the rest of the year
"Given current policy, it would be far more consistent for our political leadership to mark Alberta’s first abortion of 2026 than to celebrate its first birth."
Author: Richard Dur
This New Year, Premier Danielle Smith and the mainstream media rightly celebrated Alberta’s first babies of 2026: little Theodore, and another newborn boy whose name was not released. Moments like these remind us of something deep and true about each of us: that human life carries an inherent dignity worthy of celebration. They mark the promise of a new beginning, offering a brief reminder that life itself is something close to a miracle. In every sense, it was a hopeful way to begin a new year.
But beneath the celebration lies a haunting contradiction we ought not to ignore.
The very same government that celebrates Theodore’s birth also funds the deliberate ending of lives just like his through abortion, permitted for any reason or no reason whatsoever, and paid for with your tax dollars.
Given current policy, it would be far more consistent for our political leadership to mark Alberta’s first abortion of 2026 than to celebrate its first birth. When one of the first public acts of the new year is to celebrate a newborn, while maintaining policies that deny protection to others like him, the contradiction is laid bare.
In 2024, twenty-eight babies in Alberta were born alive after late-term abortions – and were left to die. The figures for 2025 have not yet been released, but the silence surrounding them is already familiar. These were not premature births that occurred unexpectedly or spontaneously. They occurred within a policy framework that anticipates live birth, allows for a do-not-resuscitate order in advance, and permits a non-interventional approach afterward.
Put plainly, they were children: living, fully human, utterly vulnerable – and they were left to die. Their brief lives passed quietly, without protection, without public acknowledgment, and without a word from those entrusted with their care under the policies that govern them.
Two newborns celebrated. Others born alive and left to die in silence – except, perhaps, for their whimpers.
This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a moral fact, both recent and long ignored. And it happens here, in Alberta, now, just as it did a generation ago when Danielle Smith first wrote about it as a newspaper columnist.
A society cannot coherently celebrate newborn life on January 1 while ignoring the deaths of other newborns whose only difference was how—and why—they entered the world. Every child is just as human and just as precious. And neither the circumstances of birth nor political convenience can alter those truths.
Albertans rightly celebrate new life. But it rings hollow when that celebration is selective, when we applaud some babies while quietly averting our eyes from others who are denied even the most basic care after birth.
As we begin a new year, that is the question before us: will we continue to live with this contradiction, or will we finally confront it honestly?
New Year’s resolutions often concern our own lives. This year, they should also concern the lives of those who cannot speak for themselves: resolve to speak for children who cannot; resolve to insist that babies born alive are protected, not abandoned; and resolve to ensure that the dignity we celebrate on the front pages on the first of January applies to every child, for all the days that follow, without exception.
To learn what this resolution requires in practice, visit: LeftToDie.ca