A piece by Joanna Jepson, the British curate who has successfuly moved a court to review its decision not to prosecute a doctor who aborted a child with a cleft palate

There is a tragic paradox here: that sometimes we seem to be most threatened by those who are most vulnerable. Herod, for all his might and authority, could not abide the possibility that he might one day be supplanted by a child. The deplorable exercise of his power revealed only his pathetic insecurity. So, too, in our own age, I wonder whether our readiness to refuse life to those who are less than physically perfect lays bare our own darkest fears and sense of inadequacy.