KILL a child because you don't like the colour of its eyes. Throw a young woman over the cliff because the scent of her perfume gets up your nose...

You must think I've gone mad today. But it's not I who am mad: consider rather those who prescribe abortion as the only remedy for an unborn child about to be born with a hare lip. Of course a hare lip is disfiguring, but nowadays much can be done in the way of surgery to correct it. If we were all to be slain for our defects, how many of us would survive? You have that spot on your nose? Off with your head then! You squint? Fit for nothing then but the execution pit and the bag of maggots!

How far has our sick, consumerist society fallen to turn such cosmetic matters into issues of life and death? Perhaps you will excuse me for once for talking entirely personally this morning, for I know something about imperfection and disfigurement. I was born as gorgeous as you are dear reader, but when I was one year old I fell out of my high chair into a fire. My face is badly scarred. I spent years of my childhood and adolescence in hospital enduring 16 operations by way of repair. I am now 60 years old and I still look a bit of a sight, despite the best efforts of the surgeons.

I suppose I'm lucky to be alive at all. For if the cosmetic abortionists had had their way I would surely have been killed off while still in my dear mummy's tummy - as someone falling short of the required aesthetic standards. As God is good, these murderous barbarians were not allowed within a stone's throw of my pre-existence; and so here I am, hale, hearty and happy, a priest in my beloved English church, a columnist for this esteemed newspaper, the author of three published novels, the husband of an adorable wife and the father of four wonderful children.

The abortionists would have killed me off in the womb as sub-standard. Who do these people think they are? Who do they think they speak for? I admit life has been a bit rocky at times. I remember as a child being stared at on buses by other children asking embarrassing questions. I recall agonies before drumming up my courage and going to the Saturday dance hall where I'd at least half-expected the glorious gingham girls to throw up at the very sight of me.

You have a hare lip? It can be put right. And, even if it can't, it's not the end of the world. The whole essence of life is that it's not perfect, nor was ever meant to be. Have the casual consumerist abortionists never heard of character training or what Keats called soul-making? We are what we are not because we have escaped all difficulties, but in spite of the difficulties. I would not rather be dead just because I'm not perfect.

How about this: a doctor says to a pregnant woman, "This foetus of yours is diseased of syphilis; if he is allowed to be born he will suffer torments and early on go totally deaf; he will feel constantly misunderstood and endure agonies of neglect; he will be a madman. I suggest I perform an abortion."

"OK doctor, but you do realise you're just about to kill Beethoven..."