The surrogate mom who refused to abort a baby boy with a treatable heart defect broke down in a Dallas courtroom Tuesday as she described the late-term abortion she said would have stopped his heart.
McKenna West, a 28-year-old cardiac nurse from Alaska, testified at a hearing on whether a temporary restraining order should keep her from making medical decisions for the critically ill newborn she carried and delivered. West, who calls the child Gabriel, said she wanted to protect him after the boy’s biological parents asked her to kill Gabriel in an abortion after 20 weeks.
“I knew that I wanted to protect him and I knew he deserved to be protected,” West told the court.
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Through tears, she described the abortion she refused, even though she said the surrogacy contract required her to comply.
“It would have been a two-day procedure…they would have injected his heart with a solution that would stop it,” she said.
Two days later, she said, the child would have been removed from her body.
“It was terrifying,” West said that after learning the baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome — a rare condition in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped — she would not take part in ending his life.
The diagnosis came when she was about 20 weeks pregnant. As a cardiac nurse, she has said the child “had a great shot at survival if given the opportunity to receive the necessary treatment.”
“No woman should be forced to kill the baby inside her. Most importantly, every child deserves a chance to live,” West wrote.
Instead of submitting to the abortion, she left Alaska for Texas, where abortion is banned and the woman who gives birth is recognized as the mother. She gave birth August 12 in Dallas and sought care at a hospital she said had a 100 percent survival rate for the Norwood procedure, the first of three staged surgeries used to treat the condition.
“To treat a baby with HLHS, surgeons perform a staged repair, beginning with the Norwood procedure shortly after birth, followed by two more surgeries. This medical treatment gives children a high chance of going on to live full lives,” she explained.
The biological parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed of California, call the baby Rumi.
They hired West through an agency about a year ago and agreed to pay her $60,000 to carry their child. The contract included an abortion clause if problems were found with the baby.
Late Tuesday, the judge extended the temporary restraining order for 14 days, keeping medical decisions out of West’s hands. No final custody ruling was issued.
The judge also ordered all parties, including West, to refer to the child as “Rumi,” the name on his birth certificate.
Gilkar testified that she and her husband requested that Baby Gabriel be terminated in May.
After West refused, the couple cut off payments, threatened six-figure penalties, and later sued her for more than $100,000 for delivering the baby rather than aborting him.
“The threats eventually became real,” West wrote. “But no threat or amount of money could sway my conviction that this baby had a real chance at a full life, and I could not participate in killing him and depriving him of that opportunity.”
Their attorney, Lee Budner, has called West’s parentage claims “baseless” and said the infant is “recuperating under the loving care of his parents and his heroic team of doctors, nurses, and medical staff.”
The newborn remains in intensive care in Dallas and is in critical condition after the Norwood surgery.
Court documents filed by Gilkar and Ahmed said that in the prior 24 hours, “Serious medical developments have arisen that impact the health and safety of the child. The child is in critical condition and being closely monitored at the hospital.”
They said the baby appeared to be “suffering from potential complications from the Norwood, and last night, the child’s condition declined significantly, requiring re-intubation.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office intervened and obtained a court order requiring that the newborn receive medical care.
A restraining order placed medical decisions with Gilkar and Ahmed, not West.
West, who has two children of her own, said she has raised nearly $130,000 to “Fight for Baby Gabriel’s Life.”
West has said the fight is not about taking the child.
“This is about giving an innocent child a shot at the life he deserves,” she wrote. “I’m not fighting to try to take someone else’s baby. I’m fighting because this baby boy needs someone willing to advocate for and fight alongside him as he gets the ongoing treatment his fragile heart requires.”
In court, she said she is willing to drop her claim to the baby if Gilkar and Ahmed are willing and able to provide his lifesaving care.
The legal battle now spans multiple states.
Her attorney, Lincoln Wilson, said the biological parents “haven’t given [West] anything since she declined to terminate the pregnancy.”
West has said the case comes down to whether a woman can be forced to abort the baby she is carrying and whether a child with a treatable heart defect will be given a chance to live.
“Every life matters,” she wrote. “No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me … Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life.”
