McKenna West, a 28-year-old nurse and single mother of two from Alaska, has become the center of a high-profile multistate legal battle after refusing the intended parents’ request to terminate a pregnancy she was carrying as a gestational surrogate.
In 2025, West entered a surrogacy agreement through Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists with Los Angeles couple Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. The contract provided for approximately $60,000 in compensation and included a standard clause allowing the intended parents to request termination if a serious fetal anomaly was detected.
Around the 20-week mark in spring 2026, an anatomy scan diagnosed the fetus with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a severe congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped and cannot adequately pump blood. The condition is life-threatening but treatable with a series of surgeries.
Gilkar and Ahmed requested that West terminate the pregnancy, citing medical consultations and concerns about the child’s quality of life. West refused. The parents have stated in court filings that she initially agreed and even made an appointment before changing her mind and cutting off contact. West has said she felt pressured and could not bring herself to end the pregnancy.
She traveled from Alaska to Texas, a state with strict abortion restrictions, where she argued that state law would recognize her as the birth mother. On August 12, 2026, she gave birth to a boy in the Dallas area several weeks early. West and her supporters call him Gabriel; the biological parents call him Rumi. The newborn has been receiving specialized care for HLHS in a neonatal intensive care unit.
A California court had already recognized Gilkar and Ahmed as the legal parents. Texas courts issued orders affirming their parental rights, barring West from seeing or holding the infant, making medical decisions, or presenting herself as the mother, and requiring the baby to remain in Texas pending further hearings. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened to help ensure life-saving treatment.
The intended parents have sued West for breach of contract, seeking more than $100,000 in damages (earlier reports cited figures as high as $250,000) plus additional amounts for alleged malicious conduct. West, represented in part by the Alliance Defending Freedom, is challenging the California parentage orders and seeking legal parentage under Texas law. Her attorney has indicated the fight could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. A key hearing was scheduled for late August 2026.
The case has drawn national attention, highlighting tensions between surrogacy contracts, bodily autonomy, parental rights, differing state laws on abortion and parentage, and the ethics of terminating pregnancies involving fetal anomalies. As of mid-August 2026, the baby remains under the biological parents’ legal custody while receiving medical care, and the litigation continues across California, Texas, and Alaska.
SOURCES:
Newborn with heart condition at center of surrogacy legal fight has surgery
McKenna West, surrogate’s fight for parental rights in Dallas could discourage surrogacy use in Texas, lawyers say – ABC13 Houston
Biological parents sue surrogate McKenna West for $100K for breaching contract, not aborting baby
McKenna West: Biological Parents Suing Her For ‘Outrageous Conduct’ Demand Six-Figure Sum
McKenna West Fights Biological Parents’ Restraining Order, Says She’s The Mother
