A surrogate mother who says she refused to abort a baby diagnosed with a serious heart condition is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene after a Texas judge ruled against her in a custody dispute with the California couple who hired her.
Attorneys McKenna West filed an emergency application on Wednesday, asking the nation’s highest court to halt a California court order recognizing Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar as the legal parents of the child, who was born in Texas on Aug. 12 with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS).
The filing comes after a Texas court “granted full faith and credit to the California judgment and dismissed [West] from the proceeding with prejudice” on Sept. 2, according to the emergency application filed by West’s attorneys.
“A stay is needed to preserve the status quo and ensure M.W. (McKenna West) can advocate for her rights and remain informed about Baby G. during this critical time in his young life,” the filing states.
West, who lives in Alaska, is seeking final custody or conservatorship, arguing that she does not trust the couple to provide life-saving care to the baby, whom she calls Gabriel. Ahmed and Gilkar have insisted, however, that the child’s name is Rumi.
The surrogate and her attorneys argue that, “within minutes” of receiving the diagnosis of HLHS, Gilkar “asked whether it was possible to abort him instead.” Then, within days of the diagnosis, the filing alleges, Ahmed and Gilkar demanded that West end the baby’s life by undergoing a two-day-long, late-term abortion in Seattle.
“Supreme Court caselaw has long recognized that the right to care for one’s child is a fundamental right under the Constitution. It also recognizes that a birth mother is presumptively the legal mother of a child, and the government cannot take away the birth mother’s fundamental right without procedural due process,” said Carolyn McDonnell, litigation counsel at the pro-life advocacy organization Americans United for Life, in a statement to The Christian Post.
On Friday, the pro-life legal group filed an amicus brief in support of an emergency application for an administrative stay in the case. McDonnell said the California decision terminated West’s parental rights “without following procedural safeguards required by the Constitution.”
“Americans United for Life commends [West’s] courage in declining to comply with the couple’s request for a barbaric late-term abortion after learning of their baby’s medical condition and believes it is in Baby G’s best interests for [West] to be brought into the Texas case to advocate for continued life-saving care,” said Sarah Zagorski, AUL’s senior director of public relations and communications, in a separate statement to CP.
West had agreed to carry the child as part of a surrogacy contract with the California couple. She claims she had to flee to Texas after the pair demanded that she abort their baby. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton then secured a court order stating that the child must receive “medically indicated stabilizing and life-sustaining care” after birth. The order also prevents the child from being discharged or transferred while he is receiving medical care.
After West gave birth, Ahmed and Gilkar obtained a restraining order barring her from seeing or holding the child.
Now that West has been dismissed from the case and Paxton has withdrawn from it, her attorneys warn in their emergency appeal that “the baby could be removed from the Texas hospital and taken to California for hospice — despite his treatable condition — around September 17, if not sooner.”
During a hearing in Texas, Gilkar testified that she did not regret once seeking to abort the baby, according to West’s attorneys’ filing. The appeal also notes that Ahmed and Gilkar have sued the woman they hired as a surrogate for $100,000 in damages.
According to court documents obtained last month by TMZ, the couple is seeking the damages for West’s alleged breach of the surrogacy agreement. Ahmed and Gilkar are also seeking unspecified damages for what they described as West’s “malicious, outrageous conduct.”
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
Continue reading
