A mother who gave birth to a twin girl following an incomplete termination is suing the hospital where she had the procedure for £250,000 to help with the cost of raising the child.

Stacy Dow had a termination at six weeks at Perth Royal infirmary after she found out she was pregnant with twins when she was 16. But 27 weeks later she discovered she was still carrying one of the twins.

Miss Dow, from Perth, is suing the hospital trust to compel it to contribute towards the costs of her daughter Jayde's upbringing.

Miss Dow, 20, said that after the termination she was advised it had been successful. She was then given a contraceptive injection, which she was told could lead to weight gain and an erratic menstrual cycle. She put the continuing symptoms of pregnancy down to this injection.

But when she later went to her GP she was told she was still pregnant. One of the foetuses had survived and was only seven weeks from term. Jayde was born by caesarean section on August 30 2001.

Jayde suffered no ill-effects from the termination procedure, but Miss Dow is now pursuing an action at Perth sheriff court against Tayside university hospitals NHS trust for the "financial burden" of her daughter's upbringing.

Miss Dow spoke yesterday of her shock on discovering she was still pregnant despite having had a termination.

"When I got to 33 weeks I went to the GP again and he told me I was pregnant," she said. "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 lives with her parents in Perth and she says her father, Douglas, has had to take a second job to help with the costs of raising Jayde. Jayde's father was close to the child but he died two years ago and Miss Dow says she needs help in meeting the financial burden of bringing up the child.

"I have got a child now that I wasn't planning to have and I believe the hospital should take some responsibility for that. They should have known, or at least warned me, that I might still be pregnant when I left," she said.

She said she had undertaken the legal action reluctantly because of its possible effects on her daughter.

"I still don't know if, or what, I am going to tell Jayde when the time comes," she added. "Maybe when she is nine or 10 I will sit her down and explain it to her. I just hope that she understands what happened and why I did it. Of course it will be much harder to explain to her that she had a twin."

The trust is defending the action. It accepts that one of the foetuses was left behind, but says the doctor carried out appropriate checks. Its defence says: "As far as could be clinically determined the pregnancy had been terminated. There were no features to suggest a second gestation sac was left."

Miss Dow was expecting dizygotic twins, embryos produced by two separate eggs, when she had her termination. Her court action alleges the hospital was negligent in not making further inquiries following the termination.

It states: "They ought to have known that further inquiry following surgery was necessary to establish the success of the termination of both foetuses.

"They had a duty to take reasonable care to establish that the termination had been successful. They ought to have known the contraceptive jab could have masked the symptoms of continuing pregnancy."

In 2001, Kim Nicholls, from Staffordshire, received a five-figure sum in compensation after a twin survived an abortion she had been advised to have on medical grounds.