A Supreme Court justice has denied surrogate mother McKenna West's last-ditch emergency appeal to retain control over the baby she refused to abort, ending a legal fight that spanned three states and raised hard questions about surrogacy contracts, parental rights, and the value of a child's life.
Justice Elena Kagan turned away West's petition on Tuesday without referring the case to the full court or detailing her legal reasoning, a standard practice for emergency appeals. The denial leaves intact a California court order recognizing biological parents Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, a Los Angeles couple, as the baby's legal parents. A Texas judge had already upheld that California order and stripped West of any decision-making authority over the child's treatment or custody, the New York Post reported.
The ruling marks the end of a months-long legal battle that began when West, a 28-year-old nurse and single mother of two from Alaska, refused to terminate the pregnancy after the baby was diagnosed at 20 weeks with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening heart defect that requires surgery almost immediately after birth for the child to survive beyond the first week of life.
Gilkar and Ahmed had agreed to pay West $60,000 to carry their child. Their surrogacy contract included a clause allowing termination if an "anomaly" was detected during the pregnancy. When the heart defect was discovered, the biological parents wanted the pregnancy ended. West refused.
She told those involved in the case that she "couldn't, in good faith, go through with the abortion." Instead, she traveled from Alaska to Dallas, where most abortions are banned under Texas law and where, she believed, she would be recognized as the child's mother under state statute. The baby was born August 12 in a Dallas hospital.
What followed was a jurisdictional tangle that stretched across Alaska, California, and Texas. West took the custody fight to the Supreme Court after losing at every prior stage. A California trial court issued an order recognizing Gilkar and Ahmed as the legal parents. When West tried to challenge California's jurisdiction, the court ruled that her appearance to contest jurisdiction actually constituted consent to it, a legal catch-22 that led to an ex parte judgment of parentage in favor of the biological parents, Fox News reported.
A Texas judge then gave full credit to the California ruling and barred West from making any decisions about the baby's treatment or custody.
West's lawyers had warned the Supreme Court that the stakes were enormous. In their filing, they argued she had been "denied any information about or control over the medically fragile child" and that without intervention, "she will receive no further information about the child she carried for 37 weeks and fought to save," Just The News reported.
Gilkar and Ahmed see the situation very differently. Gilkar appeared in a Dallas courtroom last month, tearfully accusing West of dragging the family through an impossible ordeal.
"She's making us run from doctor to doctor, state to state. With our baby, she's trying to take him."
Gilkar also spoke about the child she calls Rumi, the same baby West calls Gabriel. "He's the most beautiful person I've ever seen. He's the love of our lives," she told the court.
The couple's attorney, Adam Wolf, said in a statement obtained by TMZ that the Supreme Court's denial means the child can continue receiving care from his parents.
"We are truly grateful that Rumi can continue receiving the treatment he needs to survive, and that he will not be stripped away from what has been described by doctors as the excellent care of his parents."
Wolf also pointed to the breadth of West's losing record in court. Her legal filings "across three states, numerous courts of appeals, and now the U.S. Supreme Court have sought to undermine Rumi's parents' right to provide him with the care he needs," he said. "Those efforts have been rejected by every single court."
Gilkar and Ahmed are also suing West for at least $100,000. The current status of that lawsuit remains unclear.
Before the case reached the Supreme Court, both the Trump administration and the state of Texas moved to protect the child's access to medical care. The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights sent letters to Children's Medical Center of Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center, Breitbart reported, outlining the hospitals' obligations under federal disability civil rights law.
HHS was blunt in its guidance: "Federal law prohibits withholding medical treatment based on a person's disability, including based on judgments that the life of someone with a disability has less value or that the individual would impose a burden on others."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also filed to ensure the unborn baby received treatment, stating that the biological parents had refused to consent to heart surgery and may have planned to transfer the child to California to make treatment decisions under that state's more permissive laws. A Texas court ultimately ordered life-saving care for the baby.
"My office utilized every tool at our disposal to protect life, and we will not back down in continuing to support baby Gabriel's well-being. Every child in our state deserves to be cared for and protected, and that's exactly what I'll fight for."
That was Paxton, whose intervention came before the baby was born and before the custody fight consumed three state court systems and the nation's highest court.
The baby, born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, underwent open-heart surgery and was treated in a Dallas pediatric intensive care unit, Just The News reported. Attorneys for the biological parents said the child "receives the lifesaving care he needs, and they are committed to doing so for the rest of his life."
But much about the child's future remains unanswered. The baby's current medical condition is not publicly known. It is unclear whether Gilkar and Ahmed have moved or plan to move the child to California, a prospect that alarmed West and her legal team, who feared the baby could be placed in hospice care rather than continue receiving aggressive treatment. The Texas Supreme Court had cleared the way for the biological parents to move the child out of state.
West's emergency application to Kagan had specifically sought an administrative stay to prevent the baby from being relocated before she could participate in medical decisions. That request is now dead.
The case also raises broader questions about surrogacy contracts and the legal standing of a surrogate who defies the biological parents' wishes on moral grounds. West signed a contract that gave the commissioning parents decision-making authority over termination. She broke that agreement to save a child's life. Every court that heard her case ruled against her anyway.
West had fled to Texas specifically to save the baby, banking on the state's pro-life laws and its legal recognition of the birth mother. That strategy bought the child time and treatment, but it did not buy West a lasting legal foothold.
Wolf is right about one thing: every single court rejected McKenna West's claims. California, Texas, and now the U.S. Supreme Court all sided with the biological parents' legal rights under the surrogacy contract and existing parentage law.
West lost on jurisdiction. She lost on custody. She lost on conservatorship. She lost her emergency appeal. She may yet lose $100,000 in the lawsuit Gilkar and Ahmed filed against her.
But the baby she carried for 37 weeks, the one the biological parents wanted aborted at 20 weeks, is alive, has had open-heart surgery, and is, by the biological parents' own attorneys' account, receiving lifesaving care.
Courts decide who holds legal custody. They do not decide who was right about whether a child deserved to live. That question answered itself on August 12 in a Dallas hospital.
