大象传媒

Anglican priest Joanna Jepson has a most distinctive CV.

She set up the first chaplaincy for the British fashion industry and established a mentor training programme for inmates at America's largest maximum security prison.

While still a curate in her twenties, she came to national attention when she mounted a legal challenge over the abortion of a 28-week old foetus with a cleft palate, submitting聽 that this was not a serious disability. The doctors involved were not prosecuted, but she did win the right to a judicial review, argued out of her own experience of radical facial surgery. 聽After years of bullying and increasing discomfort, she had undergone the same kind of procedure which might be needed by a person born with a cleft palate.聽

Her vocation became clear when she spent time in silence with nuns at a Welsh convent, and this year she鈥檚 recounted her experiences in her first book,聽 A Lot Like Eve: Fashion, Faith and Fig-Leaves: A Memoir.聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽聽