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By Mandy Taheri
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The legal dispute involving surrogate McKenna West of Alaska, the California couple who hired her and a baby born this week in Dallas with a serious medical condition has drawn national attention, raising questions about abortion, surrogacy agreements, parental rights and how courts in different states handle competing claims over a child's care and custody.
The dispute began after the fetus was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital heart defect. According to court documents that West filed and Newsweek reviewed, the surrogate and the intended parents—Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar—diverged over how to proceed with the pregnancy after a 20-week anatomy scan showed the child's medical condition. West alleges the parents sought to terminate the pregnancy.
She later traveled from Alaska to Texas, a state with stringent abortion laws, and sought care from cardiologist specialists. Earlier this week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in the case, seeking court action to ensure the child would receive lifesaving medical treatment after birth and remain in Texas while the dispute was being resolved.
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The intended parents have also traveled to Texas, where the baby was born on Wednesday and is receiving medical care, their lawyer Lee Budner said. Budner accused West and Paxton of turning the family's situation into "political theater."
The child's heart condition has added another layer of complexity to the legal dispute, and a legal hearing in the case is scheduled to take place at 1 p.m. on August 25.
Newsweek contacted lawyers representing West and the intended parents for comment via email on Thursday.
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What Are Surrogacy Agreements?
Surrogacy agreements are contracts between a person who agrees to carry a pregnancy and the intended parent, or parents who plan to raise the child after birth. They are often facilitated through an agency. The agreements typically address issues such as compensation, medical care, parental rights, decision-making during the pregnancy and the legal process for establishing parentage.
West pursued surrogacy through the agency Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists and entered an agreement with the couple in August 2025.
Laws governing surrogacy vary widely across the U.S., with some states expressly recognizing and regulating such arrangements. Naomi Cahn, an expert in family law and a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, told Newsweek, "Typically surrogacy agreements are binding in most states, so it's a state-by-state basis." She added that Texas is "certainly not surrogate hostile" and "California is surrogacy friendly," meaning those contracts are typically enforceable.
Rachel Rebouché, a reproductive law scholar at the University of Texas School of Law, told Newsweek that the case's involvement in several states "is not uncommon at all," noting that intended parents and surrogates often live in different states. Instead, what is more unusual about this case, she said, is the "surrogate leaving her home state and going to another state because of conflict with the intended parents."
Rebouché also noted that "most surrogate agreements set out where care will happen and where birth will happen," prior to the event. In this instance, Texas was not originally stated as where the surrogate would give birth to the child.
While "Alaska law governs per the surrogacy agreement, Alaska law doesn't have a statute on surrogacy," and a California court has also gotten involved.
Rebouché continued: "So we have courts in Alaska and California that have said the agreement confers parentage on the intended parents. And now a court in Texas that agrees that the intended parents, who are biologically, genetically related to the resulting child, are the legal parents."
"The wrinkle," according to the reproductive law scholar, is that since the child was born in Texas, the Lone Star State is using "its power to protect the best interests of children" to "monitor that the intended parents make the medical decisions that are life-sustaining for the infant, which has nothing to do with their parentage."
In an Alaska court filing, lawyers for West said that "she would not be able to live with herself if she went through with terminating 'this precious baby who ha[d] now become a part of [her].'" West has received legal support from Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-abortion Christian organization that is helping her seek parental custody of the child.
Rebouché said, "Almost every surrogacy agreement has something like a provision that governs involuntary termination, so what happens if you miscarry, what's your compensation, what happens next, and then voluntary termination, usually language around sharing information with the intended parents, agreeing in advance what conditions that the parties agree the pregnancy will end if they arise."
"Most surrogacy agreements do not have language like the surrogate will comply with terminating the pregnancy despite any misgivings or personal objections because the surrogate retains her right to bodily autonomy and to medical decision-making," she continued.
Rebouché added, "There are all kinds of provisions of surrogacy contracts that people sign and believe are enforceable that no court would ever enforce."
According to court documents filed in Alaska on July 20, the intended parents said West agreed with the decision to terminate. "After heartbreaking consultations with medical providers and their own research about the suffering and quality of life HLHS babies endure, A.B. and C.D. (birth parents) made the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy," a filing from the intended parents' attorneys said. "It is undisputed that West initially agreed and that she herself made the initial appointment. She then unilaterally changed her mind, cut off all contact with A.B. and C.D., and withdrew medical releases allowing A.B. and C.D. to have contact with all medical providers."
Later, the intended parents sought to have West deliver the child—whom they have named Rumi but West refers to as Gabriel—in California, where they are located. "West is harming Rumi by relocating to Texas, requiring him to be born in Texas, away from his parents and the specialized cardiac team in Los Angeles that will provide his lifelong care," their attorney said in a court filing. "Her actions are forcing Rumi to begin treatment (including critical heart surgery) in one state and be transferred to another."
While the specifics of the surrogacy agreement have not been made public, Cahn said that "generally, certainly until the Dobbs case, there is a right to make one's own medical decisions and to protect one's own bodily autonomy as a general matter. And so a surrogacy agreement would ensure that there is that right, which means that the surrogate can make her own medical decisions." The Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
Both Cahn and Rebouché said cases of a surrogate wanting to keep the child are rare.
Anti-Abortion Groups Rally Behind West
The case has drawn the attention of anti-abortion advocates, who have embraced West as a symbol of opposition to terminating pregnancies involving fetal medical diagnoses. Live Action, a Virginia-based anti-abortion group, paid for West and her two children to travel from Alaska to Texas.
Since then, the dispute has drawn support from anti-abortion activists and conservative legal organizations, which have argued that the case spotlights questions about surrogacy, parental rights and the treatment of unborn children diagnosed with serious medical conditions. Paxton, a longtime opponent of abortion who is running for the U.S. Senate, and Alliance Defending Freedom have argued that both West and the child are entitled to protections.
Texas has some of the nation's strictest abortion laws, banning almost all abortions except when a physician determines the pregnant patient's life or a major bodily function is at serious risk. The state does not provide exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
What Texas’ Court Order Means
A Dallas County judge issued an emergency order on August 11, one day before the baby was born, outlining the roles of the parties in the dispute.
In the order, the court directed that the child receive medically necessary, life-sustaining treatment after birth and remain in Texas while the case proceeds.
The temporary restraining order bars West from "making or attempting to make medical decisions for or on behalf of the child," having possession of the child, and representing herself as the child's mother. The order reinforces the intended parents' authority over the child's care and custody while the litigation continues. Lincoln Wilson, West's attorney, told the Texas Tribune that West did not have access to the baby.
Rebouché said the August 25 hearing could address several issues, including whether the intended parents acted in the child's best interests when making medical decisions and whether the child is healthy enough to be transported to California.
What Did Attorney General Ken Paxton Do?
In a letter to local hospitals, Paxton highlighted "physicians' independent legal duty to provide the child treatment regardless of how the parentage dispute is ultimately resolved."
The attorney general asked the district court "to enter orders directing the child's care upon birth, prohibiting his removal from the state, and setting an expedited hearing on any refusal of treatment."
In an August 11 statement, Paxton said, "Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care. My office will use every tool available to protect innocent lives and ensure that every child receives the care required under Texas law."
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What Is the Child’s Medical Condition?
The newborn was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a rare and serious congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped.
Babies born with the condition typically require a series of complex surgeries to survive, and without treatment, the disorder can be fatal. About 925 babies in the U.S. are born with HLHS each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The medical condition requires three surgeries. The initial one, the Norwood procedure, is usually done within days or weeks of birth.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jenna deJong and Shakeema Edwards.
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