A California couple’s surrogate baby was born in Dallas on Wednesday, just a day after a judge ordered life-saving care for the newborn’s heart defect that the couple allegedly refused to commit to and sought to remove the baby from Texas.
On Aug. 11, a Dallas judge ordered the child to receive care after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in support of the surrogate.
The child was receiving stabilizing care and scheduled to undergo surgery at a Texas hospital, according to an Associated Press report.
Attorney Lincoln Wilson with Alliance Defending Freedom, who represents surrogate McKenna West and the newborn, said she is recovering from birth and is grateful that a Dallas judge protected the child known as baby Gabriel.
“We’re super grateful that the attorney general filed what he did when he did because he got the order we needed one day before the child was born,” Wilson said.
However, the court granted the couple’s motion for a temporary order restraining West from “exercising any possession of the child,” making any decisions on his behalf, or receiving information about his care.
“We think it’s a wrong decision,” Wilson told The Epoch Times.
“She didn’t even get to see him or to hold him after the birth, and so she’s now in a hospital recovering, but without a baby,” he said. “She fought for this child for months at great personal cost to herself.”
The child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening but treatable heart defect, at roughly 20 weeks in utero.
After finding out about the condition, the couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, allegedly pressured West to have an abortion. She refused and traveled to Texas to protect the child and to be close to medical professionals in Dallas knowledgeable about the baby’s condition.
Without intervention, the treatable heart defect is fatal in the first days or weeks of life.
The couple denied in court filings that they intended to refuse surgery once the child was born, according to their attorney, Lee Budner, the Associated Press reported. They argued that the surrogate broke the contract and that a California court determined she has no rights to legal or physical custody of the child.
The Epoch Times reached out to Budner for comment.
Wilson alleged that the California surrogacy agreement violated West’s and the child’s rights to due process in a life-or-death situation.
West is challenging a California judgment that gave parentage to the couple.
Texas treats the woman who gives birth as the legal mother by default under Family Code 160.201(a) unless there is a properly validated gestational agreement under Texas procedures.
Wilson said that a surrogacy agreement wasn’t properly registered, and that if the California judgment is overturned, West will legally become the child’s mother under Texas law.
Attorneys asked the couple more than once to confirm they would give the child life-saving care, he said.
”They refused to commit. They said it was hypothetical, and they couldn’t answer it until he was born,” Wilson said.
On Aug. 10, Paxton’s office intervened in a Dallas district court lawsuit affecting the parent-child relationship involving the surrogate and the intended parents, seeking care for the child upon birth, prohibiting the child’s removal from the state, and setting an expedited hearing on any refusal of treatment, according to the letter.
“This case arrives at the courthouse looking like a contract dispute. It is not one. Once the child is born alive in Texas, he will be a complete legal person, and Texas will protect his life without regard to the circumstances of his conception or the terms of any private agreement,” said Paxton’s brief before Dallas’s 301st Judicial District Court.
Paxton also sent a letter to UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, which were potential hospitals where West would give birth. The letter notified the hospitals and the staff expected to care for the child of their legal duty to provide life-saving care at birth without a court order and regardless of disputed parenthood.
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