Stacy Dow, who was 16 when she found out that she was pregnant, is seeking compensation and damages for the “financial burden” of raising her daughter. Miss Dow, whose father has had to take on a second job to help to pay for his granddaughter, is claiming for “loss, injury and damage” suffered at the hands of Tayside University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The teenager, who hoped to train as a nurse, decided to have an abortion as soon as she discovered that she was six weeks pregnant. Days later the procedure was carried out at Perth Royal Infirmary, where doctors advised her that no live material was left in her uterus.

When Miss Dow started to put on weight and her periods stopped, she assumed that it was because of the contraception injection she had been given. The hospital had told her that possible side-effects included weight gain and an erratic menstrual cycle.

Miss Dow said: “After 33 weeks I went to the GP and he told me I was pregnant. I thought he meant I had fallen pregnant again, and I couldn’t believe it when I was told that it was one of the original pregnancies.”

Miss Dow’s daughter, Jayde, who is now a healthy three-year-old, weighed 6lb 2oz when she was delivered by Caesarean section on August 30, 2001, at the same hospital in which her mother had had the abortion seven months previously.

Miss Dow said of the abortion: “They told me in the hospital that the operation had been successful and there was nothing left in the womb.”

She said that when she discovered that she was pregnant she didn’t know what to say or do. “When I told my Dad what had happened he nearly crashed his van. I have got a child now that I wasn’t planning to have and I believe the hospital should take some reponsibility for that. It has totally changed my life and my parents’ lives. I wasn’t ready for it.”

She added: “I still don’t know if, or what, I’m going to tell Jayde when the time comes. I just hope she understands what happened and why I did it.”

Miss Dow lives with her parents, Douglas, 40, and Barbara, 41. The toddler’s father, who has not been named, had been Miss Dow’s boyfriend at school. He died two years ago.

Legal documents filed at Perth Sheriff Court accuse Perth Royal Infirmary of failing “to take reasonable care to establish that the termination had been successful”.

Although the NHS, which is defending the action, admits that a baby survived, it says that a doctor “checked the cavity of the uterus and could feel no further products of conception. As far as could be clinically determined the pregnancy had been terminated.” It claims that the amount sought by Miss Dow is excessive.

In 2001 Kim Nicholls, 36, from Stafford, was given £10,000 in an out-of-court settlement from a surgeon after one of her twins survived an abortion that was carried out privately.

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