Supreme Court makes huge ruling on ill baby at center of multi-state surrogacy dispute
A month-old baby caught in the middle of a bitter, multi-state surrogacy dispute has been given the green light to leave Texas for a hospital in Los Angeles, after the state's supreme court ruled that keeping him in place any longer could cost him his life.
The Thursday ruling, reported by the Guardian, found that "sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter," pointing to testimony from the infant's Texas physician that the window for an ICU-to-ICU transfer was short and 'ripe now'.
The baby, born with a rare and severe heart defect, is at the center of a legal battle between his biological parents and the surrogate who carried him - one that has dragged on since before he was even born, and shows no sign of ending with this latest court order.
Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, a couple from California, turned to surrogacy after eight failed rounds of IVF and a hysterectomy left them unable to conceive naturally.
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They hired McKenna West, a 28-year-old nurse from Alaska, to carry their child.
Around 20 weeks into the pregnancy, doctors diagnosed the unborn baby with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a condition where the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped. Under the terms of their surrogacy agreement, Gilkar and Ahmed asked West to terminate the pregnancy given the severity of the diagnosis.
West refused, and instead traveled to Texas, one of the states with the strictest abortion laws in the country, to give birth.
She has said she believed the couple would not pursue life-saving treatment for the baby and wanted to 'protect' him. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton later intervened publicly to ensure the child received medical care after birth.
The baby, whom his parents named Rumi and West calls Gabriel, was born on August 12. He has since undergone a complex two-day open-heart surgery, which his parents' legal team says was delayed because West refused to undergo an amniocentesis that doctors needed to properly plan the procedure. At one point, according to Gilkar, a feeding tube came loose and the baby stopped breathing, prompting a hospital chaplain to be called.
Who are the parents in the McKenna West surrogacy case?
Gilkar and Ahmed have since been recognized as Rumi's legal parents by a California court, a ruling West is still contesting.
Speaking in a Dallas courtroom in August, Gilkar broke down describing her son as 'the most beautiful person' she'd ever seen, adding: 'He's the love of our lives. He's suffering a lot.'
West, backed by the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, has taken her fight to the US Supreme Court, asking justices to block the California ruling. Her attorneys argue she was unlawfully cut out of decisions about a baby she gave birth to.
Gilkar and Ahmed's lawyers, Adam Wolf and Lee Budner, have hit back, accusing West of 'fabricating' an emergency and running a "publicity tour" that risks the baby's care.
West is also suing the couple for breach of contract after they stopped her surrogate compensation, while a Dallas judge has extended a restraining order against her. The parents have launched a GoFundMe to help cover Rumi's ongoing medical costs.
UNILAD has contacted representatives for McKenna West for comment.
Thomas Bamford