A couple who say they were put under pressure to abort their “non-viable” unborn son have celebrated his first birthday.

Jett Morris was born prematurely at 25 weeks after surviving for five weeks in his mother’s womb after her waters broke early. It’s thought he will not suffer any great complications despite having two small holes in his heart, the Daily Telegraph reports.

His parents, Mhairi and Paul Morris, claim that he would not be alive if they had given in to pressure placed on them by staff at East Surrey Hospital to end the pregnancy.

“They didn’t see him as a child yet – they just called him a ‘non-viable foetus’. I was devastated – I’d just had a 20-week scan and everything was perfect,” Mrs Morris said.

“The Doctor said, ‘We’re going to get you into theatre. You have to have a termination because there’s nothing we can do.’”

“When he came back in and Paul and I had talked, we told him I wouldn’t be going into theatre. The doctor looked his watch and rolled his eyes at me, as if I was wasting time. I said to Paul, ‘We have to get out of here.’”

Mrs Morris suffered pre-term premature rupture of membranes, where the waters break before the pregnancy reaches full term.

She was later diagnosed with placenta praevia, where the placenta forms underneath the baby and can cause bleeding and infection.

She was told she was likely to go into labour within 48 hours and the baby would die, and after the couple’s conversation with the doctor they faced repeated calls from nurses to have an abortion – but days later she still had not given birth and was allowed to go home.

Twelve days later she started bleeding and was rushed to hospital.

The local health trust was only equipped to deal with children born after 28 weeks and the couple had to travel 80 miles to Portsmouth Hospital.

Doctors there warned their son could be brain damaged and would probably die at birth because his lungs would not be developed.

But Jett defied the odds and came out kicking and wriggling on December 6, 2013 – and even let out a small “squeak” before being rushed to an incubator.

He initially suffered with chronic lung disease and jaundice – which he quickly recovered from after his lungs and organs developed.

He was finally allowed home on March 5 almost three weeks before his original due date of March 24.

Although Jett has two small holes in his heart, it is not thought they will ever cause a problem for him and and he was taken off an oxygen machine in May.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust’s Chief Executive Michael Wilson said they were working with Mhairi to resolve her concerns about her treatment.

“We have only very recently learned of her concerns as no complaints were raised earlier – had they been, we would gotten in touch with her directly and looked into what had taken place.

“We are now working closely with her and her family to understand what happened in detail.

In Ireland, the support group Every Life Counts helps families in situations where children are diagnosed with life-shortening conditions. They recently launched a campaign to ban the phrase “incompatible with life” from hospitals and other medical facilities, saying it was a discriminatory term rather than a medical one.