An unborn child narrowly escaped being aborted after being incorrectly diagnosed with major foetal abnormalities because its mother sought a second opinion which disproved the original diagnosis.

Viktorija Avisane, 31, considered an abortion after getting “devastating news” late last year at Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital, admitting to the Sun newspaper: “I could have killed a healthy baby.”

Both a twenty week anomaly scan, and a subsequent amniocentesis test at the Rotunda indicated major abnormalities, but on a visit to her native Latvia, another set of tests showed no such problems.

The child was born and is now seven months old and in good health.

Ms Avisane put the survival of her child down to in part Ireland’s one-time pro-life laws: “And then I started to think about abortion. Thank God abortion was not widely available in ­Ireland, because if there was I was going to go there. I would have killed a healthy baby.”

The Pro Life Campaign described the case as deeply disturbing, and yet unsurprising. Spokesperson Eilís Mulroy, said it “highlights the life or death prenatal genetic diagnosis lottery that unborn babies and their mothers are being subjected to under the current abortion regime.

“We need to urgently develop a national conversation around the risks associated with abortion and the limits of pre-natal diagnosis. In fact, it is a conversation that should have happened two years ago,” concluded Ms Mulroy.