Surrogate Who Refused to Abort Sick Baby Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Custody Battle

An Alaskan surrogate who refused to abort a California couple’s baby asked the Supreme Court on Sept. 9 to intervene in a custody battle over the medically fragile newborn.

McKenna West gave birth to a baby boy, whom she calls Gabriel, on Aug. 12 in Dallas, one day after a judge ordered life-saving care for the newborn’s rare but treatable heart defect.

West’s lawyers filed an emergency application asking the Supreme Court to halt a July 27 California court’s decision that granted the biological parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, custody while that ruling is challenged.

West is seeking custody, or conservatorship, of the baby to allow her to advocate for him and stay informed about his condition.

Her attorneys claim in the petition to the Supreme Court that the couple opposed a Texas court order requiring that the baby receive medical treatment. They also said the biological parents plan to remove him from the Texas hospital that is treating him and take him to California for hospice care, despite his treatable condition, around Sept. 17, if not sooner.

The Texas court granted full credit to the California judgment on Sept. 2, according to the filing.

Gabriel has been receiving medical care for hypoplastic left heart syndrome in Dallas, where he was born and first underwent heart surgery.

“The resulting harm cannot be redressed on later review if Baby G. does not live to see it,” West’s attorneys state in the petition.

Her attorneys claim the California Superior Court ruled in an expedited procedure in a “gross violation of federal due process.”

Gilkar and Ahmed, who call the baby Rumi, live in Los Angeles. The couple has not yet responded to West’s petition to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who handles emergency matters from the Ninth Circuit in California, has yet to act on the petition.

West, a cardiac nurse, fled to Texas after the baby’s biological parents invoked a clause in their surrogacy contract and asked her to abort the fetus after a 20-week anatomy scan revealed the unborn child had a congenital heart condition.

West refused to end the pregnancy on moral and professional grounds.

“She told the surrogacy agency that she could not live with herself if she terminated ‘this precious baby’ whom she felt moving in her womb, and she hoped that the couple would have a change of heart,” according to the court petition.

She also offered to cut ties with the couple to ensure they had no further financial obligations and raise the baby herself or arrange for an adoption. But the biological parents repeatedly demanded the pregnancy termination, threatening her in writing with penalties of more than $250,000, according to West’s lawyers.

According to court documents, the baby had to be born outside Alaska to access the specialist care he needed, which included getting his first surgery within days of birth that offered a high chance of survival. Texas was identified as a source of care where West also had family support, her lawyers said in the petition.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition to intervene in the suit on Aug. 10 in support of the child getting access to medical care.

The case has since evolved into a national, multi-state legal battle over custody of the child and ongoing treatment for the critically ill baby.

West was barred from seeing or holding the child after the couple obtained a restraining order.

The Epoch Times reached out to Gilkar and Ahmed’s lawyer for comment about the petition but didn’t receive an immediate response.

The couple told a Texas judge at an Aug. 25 hearing in Dallas that the child’s condition had worsened and they were anguished by attempts to deny them their parental rights.

“He’s our child,” Gilkar said, wiping away tears.