(LifeSiteNews) — A new poll by Research Co. highlights good news out of Alberta: According to political consultant and executive director of Prolife Alberta Richard Dur, “only 37% of Albertans say abortion should always be legal, 43% say only in certain cases” and an additional “9% would outlaw it entirely.” As Dur wrote at the Western Standard, adding those numbers together, “you get a majority. That’s not fringe. That’s Alberta.”
This comes on the heels of data published by the CBC in June finding that the number of Albertans who “strongly agree” with the importance of traditional family values has grown from 35 percent to 40 percent over the past seven years.
According to the CBC, since 2018, “the number of Albertans who think we’d have fewer problems if there was more emphasis on traditional family values has remained steady, with almost two-thirds of people agreeing with that sentiment,” but “the number of Albertans who strongly agree with the importance of family values has notably grown, from 35 to 40 per cent, over the last seven years.”
In fact, as I noted at the time, an additional 24 percent of Albertans “somewhat agree” with the statement “Society would have fewer problems if there were more of an emphasis on traditional family values,” while only 15 percent “somewhat disagree” and 17 percent “strongly disagree.” That only 17% of Albertans “strongly disagree” that an emphasis on traditional family values would reduce social problems is, in 2025, extraordinary.
Dur noted that the recent polling on pro-life sentiment is very encouraging. “The numbers are fresh, and they show the debate is far from settled,” he wrote. “And when it comes to money, the split is starker still. Just 30% want taxpayer dollars covering abortion whenever requested — even when there is no medical reason. The rest say: save our tax dollars for saving lives in the cancer ward, the ICU — not for ending them.”
“For decades, elites chanted the mantra: ‘The debate is settled.’ It was never persuasion, only propaganda,” he continued. “They hoped if they said it often enough, you’d believe it. But the poll exposes what Albertans have long understood: the debate was never closed.”
It is time for this government — and for the many MLAs who call themselves pro-life — to prove it, to stop hiding behind “consensus” when the real consensus is right in front of them, to stop pretending Ottawa sets Alberta’s conscience. Albertans don’t want abortion on demand. Albertans don’t want abortion funded on demand. Albertans want limits, compassion for women, and protection for children.
In August, polling commissioned by Campaign Life Coalition revealed that 79.4% of the constituents in federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s new riding of Battle River-Crowfoot strongly oppose legal abortion at different points in pregnancy, meaning that a super-majority of Poilievre’s constituents oppose his support for Canada’s abortion-on-demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy regime. The survey noted that 17 percent oppose abortion in all cases (significantly higher than the national average), almost 27% oppose abortion except for rape and incest (a tiny percentage of abortions), and 35% support a ban on abortion after the first trimester.
Dur is precisely right: Abortion activists insist that the debate is over in part because they realize how much support actually exists in Canada for restricting abortion. Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada and other abortion groups work constantly to suppress pro-life speech because the debate only remains “closed” if they can shut it down forcibly. Despite those efforts, pro-life activists take to the streets every day across Canada, changing hearts and minds on abortion — including in Alberta. To those who claim the abortion debate is “closed,” we respond: That’s fine. We started without you.
