McKenna West, 28, a surrogate mother carrying the offspring of a Californian couple, has traveled across America to save the life of her unborn child.
West, a nurse from Alaska, is currently 35 weeks pregnant with a baby boy she has named Gabriel and is set to give birth on September 2.
Halfway through the pregnancy, an ultrasound diagnosed the fetus with a severe but treatable cardiac condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS).
Highlights
- McKenna West, a surrogate mother, was told to terminate her pregnancy by the intended parents when the unborn baby was diagnosed with a heart condition.
- A court recently issued an order on the matter after she refused to abort and traveled to Texas to seek legal protection and post-birth medical care for the child.
- West had previously signed a legally binding contract with the intended parents that included a termination clause in case of any anomalies.
The baby’s intended parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, urged West to terminate the pregnancy, but she fought back.
Now, she has gained the support of a politician as well as the court in keeping Gabriel alive and providing him with necessary medical care after he is born.
“It was just a horrible feeling,” West said in an interview.
A Texas court ordered Gabriel to be given life-saving medical care upon birth
After being asked to undergo an abortion, McKenna West traveled to Texas and asked a family district court in Dallas County to allow the child to remain in the state and get treatment.
West said in a court document that she was horrified by the idea of the baby being injected with “a solution that will stop his heart and then he’ll be literally ripped apart and dismembered as he’s taken from her uterus.”
Texas family law recognizes anyone who gives birth in the state as the legal mother of the child, Rachel Rebouché, a professor specializing in reproductive law at the University of Texas School of Law, told The Texas Tribune.
On Tuesday, August 11, the court ordered that life-saving medical care be provided for Gabriel upon birth without delay and for as long as necessary.
But West’s legal victory comes with a twist, as the ruling forbade her from making any medical decisions for the child once he is born, and entrusted the intended parents with the responsibility.
However, neither West nor the intended parents are allowed to intervene if a doctor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center or Children's Medical Center of Dallas — two institutions equipped to treat HLHS — determines that a certain treatment is necessary to save the infant's life.
The lawsuit is still pending, but the court appointed an individual named Susan Duesler, who is not named among the defendants or plaintiffs in the suit, as the legal guardian of the child.
Meanwhile, Gilkar and Ahmed have filed a lawsuit in California, seeking to establish parental rights, and West has filed a counter-suit in Alaska seeking sole custody of Gabriel for the administration of life-saving care.
Neither party is allowed to take the child out of Texas after he is born. They will be back in court on August 25.
McKenna West’s brother stepped up after conflict started with the intended parents
HLHS is a rare congenital disability where the left side of the baby’s heart is too small and underdeveloped to pump blood properly to the body. Without immediate emergency medical care and surgeries, it is fatal within the first few days of life.
According to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, with surgical treatment, the survival rate to age 5 is 72%, after which the survival rate for people reaching the age of 18 is approximately 90%. The oldest person to survive HLHS is in their 30s, the hospital says.
When West learned about the intended parents’ wish to abort the child from their liaison, Worldwide Surrogacy Specialist LLC, she was about 24 weeks pregnant. It devastated her.
“I was really scared of how I would view myself as a woman and a mother, how I'd be able to come home to my kids after participating in something like that,” West, who has two kids of her own, told Live Action News.
“I felt I had no other option, no way out. It was just a horrible feeling.”
It was West’s brother who came to her rescue. He called her and said he had spoken to his wife and wanted to take Gabriel in, which made West feel like she was not alone.
“We'll adopt this baby if it means you don't have to go through this procedure. We're here for you. We love you either way,” he had told West.
Soon, she also had the support of eminent public figures such as Live Action founder Lila Rose, podcaster Ellen Fisher, and Texas Attorney General and Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
Texas politician backed McKenna West in her mission to get Gabriel medical care
The HLHS diagnosis was “completely unexpected,” with all the genetic testing and blood work coming up normal up until the 20th week, West told Live Action News.
Once she found out about the diagnosis, she feared that the intended parents would want an abortion, which went against her values.
Intended parents cannot legally force a surrogate to abort, but refusing to do so would be considered a breach of a legal contract. That, in turn, could put the birth mother at risk of a costly lawsuit.
Rachel Rebouché told The Texas Tribune that if the Dallas judge upholds the gestational agreement signed between the intended parents and West in Alaska, then Gilkar and Ahmed could gain the right to make the medical calls.
“If the intended parents decided that they didn’t want their child to have surgery at birth, for whatever reason, like, painful disability, you know… they have that right. They have the right to deny treatment,” she said.
West was backed in her efforts to avoid the aforementioned circumstance by Ken Paxton, who submitted a brief a day before the court order was issued.
“Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care,” he said in his press release.
His office also sent a letter to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center or Children's Medical Center of Dallas to remind them they have a legal obligation to provide medical care to the to-be-born child irrespective of the outcome of the parental disputes.
HLHS is treated with three open-heart surgeries performed over the first few years of life, starting with the Norwood Procedure within days of birth, followed by the Glenn and Fontan procedures.
West’s surrogacy contract included a clause about pregnancy termination in case of an “anomaly”
The gestational contract West signed with Gilkar and Ahmed in Alaska included a clause that would require her to terminate the pregnancy in the event of an “anomaly.”
West had expressed her concern with the clause at the time, but the surrogacy agency told her it was a rare situation.
She opened up about her decision to dismiss her qualms about the clause in an August 7 interview with Megyn Kelly.
“Going into this, we had talked about it when we first met, and I asked them their views on termination, and it was a reassuring conversation that they really wanted a baby,” West said.
“They weren’t exactly sure what decision they would make if something came up, but they ultimately just wanted to be parents, so I felt confident moving forward with them that termination would not be their first choice.”
She added that she felt “trapped” due to this contract and felt she “had no voice,” but she knew in her heart that she wanted to protect the baby.
West’s lawyer, Lincoln Wilson, also spoke on the show and accused the intended parents of running a “pressure campaign” against the surrogate mother, forcing her to abort the baby.
“They even enlisted her own prior counsel to serve her with a demand of $250,000 with a process server in the middle of the night,” Wilson said.
"Her body, her choice." Netizens reacted to surrogate mom McKenna West's fight to not terminate pregnancy
