Filing argues California couple could place newborn in hospice care
McKenna West, the surrogate who refused an abortion request from the California couple who hired her, has asked the US Supreme Court to intervene in a dispute over who should have custody of the baby she carried. West filed an emergency appeal asking the court to halt a previous ruling that granted parental rights to Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, the California couple.
Ahmed and Gilkar had asked West to abort the pregnancy after a scan at 20 weeks showed the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a defect in which the left side of the heart cannot pump enough blood to the body. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the condition often requires multiple surgeries, which are not a cure, and infants with it can have lifelong complications.
West refused the request, traveled to Texas, where nearly all abortions are illegal, and gave birth there last month to a boy with the condition. She said in the Supreme Court filing that she denied the couple’s requests to have the abortion after learning of treatment options and wanting to keep “this precious baby.”
The case has drawn support from several Republican officials. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in the matter after West arrived in the state and won an emergency court order requiring that the boy receive medical care there. The newborn had surgery soon after birth.
A California court previously granted parental rights to Ahmed and Gilkar, while a Texas court issued a restraining order blocking West from seeing the baby. The competing orders set up the jurisdictional conflict that West is asking the Supreme Court to resolve.
In a previous court hearing, Gilkar said the baby — whom the couple named Rumi — was “our child” and “the love of our lives,” according to the Associated Press. The couple has said West traveled to Texas without telling them and blocked their access to medical information about the pregnancy.
West has argued that the biological parents should not have custody because she worries they would not give the boy necessary medical care, given that they sought to abort the child after learning of the life-threatening condition. Last month, an attorney for the California couple said the child was in critical condition and seemed to be “suffering from potential complications.”
In the filing, lawyers for West suggested that the California couple could place the child in hospice care. West argued that without intervention from the Supreme Court, she would no longer have access to information about the child’s medical condition.
The BBC has contacted lawyers for Ahmed and Gilkar for comment.