Britain is in a political frenzy after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that a snap general election will take place on July 4.
This means that some of his government's bills will lapse before becoming law, including a controversial Criminal Justice Bill which would have included two extreme abortion-up-to-birth amendments. This would have been the biggest change in the regulation of abortion in the UK since 1967. It is not unlikely that this would have paved the way for the legalisation of infanticide later on.
The pro-life movement has rightly hailed this as "brilliant news" in its battle to resist ever more permissive abortion laws in the UK.
However, as a sign of Parliament's pro-life priorities, it did manage to push through an incredibly compassionate, thoughtful bill which had vigorous bipartisan support: the Pet Abduction Bill. This law will go into effect soon. It makes taking a cat, or taking or detaining a dog, a criminal offence. Anyone convicted could face a fine or a maximum of five years in prison.
The sponsor of the Bill, Anna Wirth MP, explained that: "Britain is a nation of animal lovers. Our pets are part of our families. They comfort us when we are down and give us a huge amount of laughter, energy and joy when we are up - and, in fact, all the time. They make a house a home. That is why it is so heartbreaking when any one of our beloved pets is snatched away from us, and it is also why the taking, abducting or detaining of someone else's beloved pet is such a sick and cruel crime."
I used to think that comfort, laughter, energy and joy were what children were for. It is one of life's great mysteries - why are the British so willing to protect their pets and so unwilling to protect their babies?
It is an iron law of human nature that whenever we make something easier we tend to see more of it, and it could easily have been predicted, when Boris Johnson's administration allowed abortion pills to be prescribed over the phone during the Covid pandemic, that there would be a surge in abortions. This has indeed come to pass: the long-delayed figures for 2022 show the highest number of abortions ever recorded in England and Wales, with 252,122 in 2022 - an increase of 37,253 (17.34 percent) from 2021.
This massive increase is shocking but not surprising; and it is no surprise that the Department of Health and Social Care - whose name begins to sound positively Orwellian - took so long to release them.
Doctors have been warning of the disastrous outcomes of the pills-by-post system for women's health, while vulnerable women have faced high levels of coercion.
Public opinion has shown consistent support for more restrictions on abortion, not fewer, but will this new death toll make a difference? Each one is of course a tragedy, but as Stalin observed, "The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
And so are the millions of abortions, the latest statistics adding hugely to the more than ten million unborn lives lost since 1967.
Sometimes things have to get much worse before they get better - before people prioritise what has up until now been seen as a side issue, albeit with an agenda relentlessly driven by abortion advocates. For as a rash of "censorship zones" erupts around abortion clinics, making it illegal to offer humane alternatives to vulnerable and needy expectant mothers, we see people trying to save lives continually harassed while those taking innocent lives enjoy public subsidies.
Will future generations look back with horror upon this era of mass pre-birth killing? An era which frowned upon the disposal of a baby wipe down the toilet, while women were told to dispose of their aborted unborn babies down the toilet?
Of course, those future generations would have to be born, and the chances of that are getting ever slimmer. Perhaps we may just get more pets. To quote Lyn Brown MP's contribution to the debate in Parliament: "Can I say first of all that my dog is truly the most amazing small loving creature in the entire universe?"
Notwithstanding concern for animal welfare, we still seem to care about children; but with the most unhealthy and dangerous place for children now being the mother's womb, concerns about pets' health and safety are beginning to look like displacement activity.
The forthcoming general election may succeed in killing the pro-death Bills that would remove the last vestiges of legal disapproval from abortion, but the cat protection Bill will go ahead. While society plays cat's cradle, the child's cradle is eerily empty.