A Surrogate Fled to Texas to Avoid an Abortion. Now She Wants Custody of the Baby.
A surrogate refused to have an abortion after the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart problem. She fled to Texas and had the child. Now she wants a judge to give custody to her instead of the biological parents.
Reporting from the county courthouse in Dallas
A battle over surrogacy and abortion that drew national attention to the birth of a baby in Texas this month became a wrenching courtroom drama in Dallas on Tuesday. Both the biological mother and the surrogate told a judge they cared for the child and argued that they should be deemed the parent.
The question of parentage has become a new flashpoint in what began as a seemingly ordinary surrogacy arrangement between a California couple who had struggled to have a baby on their own and an Alaska nurse who acted as their surrogate.
That arrangement was upended after the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. Citing a clause in the contract, the couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, asked the surrogate, McKenna West, to get an abortion. Ms. West refused. Later, she decided to go to Texas, moving there in July, and have the baby.
The hearing, which stretched more than four hours, centered on the efforts by Ms. West to gain custody over the baby, a boy who was born with a severe heart condition on Aug. 12. She sought to reverse a ruling by a California court from June that recognized Ms. Gilkar and Mr. Ahmed as the parents.
