Some stories don’t need embellishment. They just need to be laid out plainly, because the facts alone do all the moral work.
Here they are.
Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed hired McKenna West to carry their child as a surrogate. Around 20 weeks into the pregnancy, doctors diagnosed the baby with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a severe congenital heart defect. According to the Texas Attorney General’s office, the couple asked West to terminate the pregnancy after that diagnosis.
West refused.
She fled to Texas, gave birth on August 12, and the boy she calls Gabriel underwent the first of three life-saving heart surgeries days later.
He’s alive.
Now those same biological parents are suing West for more than $100,000, alleging breach of their surrogacy contract and “malicious, outrageous conduct,” while simultaneously pursuing custody of the child whose pregnancy they had sought to terminate.
Sit with that for a second.
Let’s also be fair about what’s disputed here. Gilkar and Ahmed’s attorneys have pushed back hard on the characterization that they “forced” or “threatened” West. Court filings reportedly claim West initially agreed to the termination and even scheduled the appointment before changing her mind. Their lawyer, Lee Budner, calls West’s ongoing custody claims “baseless” and says they violate parentage rulings already secured in Alaska and California.
They get their day in court.
But even accepting that version of events, I’m stuck on the same problem.
They wanted the pregnancy terminated.
West didn’t.
Gabriel is alive because it wasn’t.
And now they want custody.
You don’t get to want him gone and then want him yours. Pick one.
A surrogacy contract is not a hunting license. It does not purchase the right to order the destruction of a living child because his heart didn’t form the way everybody hoped it would.
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is serious. It’s one of the most severe congenital heart defects a baby can have. But children do survive it. There are treatments. There are staged surgeries. Gabriel has already begun that road.
His diagnosis was terrible news.
It wasn’t permission to stop seeing him as a human being.
McKenna West apparently understood that.
She carried this child. She received the diagnosis. She knew what the contract expected of her. And somewhere between the lawyers, the medical appointments and the frightening uncertainty of what Gabriel’s future might look like, she said no.
Then she followed through.
That decision has hardly made her life easier. She’s postpartum, facing a six-figure lawsuit and fighting across multiple states over the future of a child she carried to birth.
Lila Rose of Live Action called West’s actions heroic.
I’m having trouble finding a better word.
There was an easier path available to her. She could have gone along with the requested termination and avoided everything that’s happening now.
She didn’t.
Instead she looked at a desperately sick unborn child who had absolutely no ability to advocate for himself and decided his life was worth the trouble.
That’s not “malicious conduct.”
That’s conscience.
And whatever ultimately happens with the competing legal claims — questions of contractual obligations, parentage and custody are now for courts to sort through — I hope the law doesn’t become so enamored with paperwork that it loses sight of the human being at the center of all of it.
Gabriel.
He’s not a contractual dispute.
He’s not an inconvenience.
He’s not an argument over jurisdiction between Alaska, California and Texas.
He’s a little boy recovering from heart surgery.
And he’s here because when the pregnancy became unimaginably complicated, one person involved refused to agree that ending it was the answer.
Maybe the courts will ultimately determine that West has no parental rights. Maybe they’ll conclude the surrogacy agreement controls questions that are legally separate from her decision to continue the pregnancy. Those are legal questions, and judges will answer them.
But there’s a moral question here too.
That one isn’t nearly as complicated.
A vulnerable child was facing the end of his life before he’d even taken his first breath. McKenna West gave him the chance to take it.
Gabriel is here.
He’s fighting.
And now the woman whose refusal made that possible is being sued for more than $100,000.
Somewhere along the way, common sense ought to have something to say about that.