Supreme Court Rejects Surrogate’s Emergency Bid in Baby Custody Fight After Abortion Request

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an emergency request from surrogate McKenna West in the bitter custody fight over a baby born with a life-threatening heart defect after she refused the intended parents’ request to terminate the pregnancy.

Justice Elena Kagan denied West’s bid to suspend a California court order recognizing Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed as the boy’s legal parents. West, an Alaska nurse who carried the child as a gestational surrogate, had sought conservatorship and a role in decisions over his medical care.

Kagan gave no explanation for the September 22 denial. The order keeps the California parentage judgment in place while West continues challenging the state court’s authority over her.

The dispute has attracted national attention because it crosses three states and combines questions over surrogacy, abortion, parental rights and who may make life-or-death medical decisions for a seriously ill newborn.

West gave birth to the boy in Dallas on August 12. He was diagnosed during the pregnancy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a severe congenital defect that leaves the left side of the heart underdeveloped and prevents normal blood flow.

After receiving the diagnosis, Gilkar and Ahmed asked West to terminate the pregnancy, according to court filings. Their surrogacy agreement included a provision addressing termination in cases involving fetal abnormalities. West refused and later traveled to Texas, where she gave birth.

West calls the child Gabriel. Gilkar and Ahmed, who are his genetic parents, named him Rumi.

Before the birth, the California couple sought a court order establishing their parentage. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge declared Gilkar and Ahmed the boy’s legal parents and awarded them legal and physical custody under California’s gestational surrogacy laws.

West has since fought that order, arguing that California lacked personal jurisdiction over her. Her attorneys say she appeared in the California proceedings to challenge the court’s authority and that the judge improperly treated her participation as consent to jurisdiction.

That question is central to the legal fight now moving through the courts.

Personal jurisdiction determines whether a court has authority to issue binding rulings against a particular person. A party can appear specifically to contest that authority. West argues California went further by using her participation to exercise jurisdiction and enter a parentage judgment that followed her and the child into other states.

Her attorneys have also pointed to a provision in the surrogacy agreement calling for disputes to be handled in Alaska and challenged how she was served in the California proceeding.

The interstate fight intensified after the baby’s birth. West sought custody in Texas, arguing that Gilkar and Ahmed’s earlier decision to request an abortion raised concerns about whether they would authorize the care needed to keep him alive.

Gilkar and Ahmed have rejected that claim. Their attorneys told the Supreme Court that the couple has remained with their son in intensive care and has consented to the treatment recommended by his doctors.

The child underwent surgery shortly after his birth. Medical records and testimony cited in subsequent court proceedings indicated that additional treatment would be needed.

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court cleared the way for Gilkar and Ahmed to transfer their son from Dallas to Los Angeles for continued care. The court cited testimony from his physician supporting an ICU-to-ICU transfer during a limited medical window and said preserving the medically fragile child’s life was the central concern.

West then pressed her emergency request at the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to halt the California parentage order while her challenges continued.

Her application drew support from 13 states led by Florida and Alaska, along with anti-abortion organizations. The states argued that the dispute raises broader questions about the power of one state to impose a parentage judgment when a surrogacy agreement, surrogate and child have connections to multiple jurisdictions.

The request before Kagan centered on that jurisdictional fight rather than asking the Supreme Court to decide the broader legality of surrogacy agreements or contractual provisions involving abortion.

Tuesday’s denial leaves Gilkar and Ahmed with legal authority over their son and his medical care while West pursues her challenge through the California appeals process. The larger dispute over how far one state’s surrogacy judgment can reach across state lines remains unresolved.