The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene Tuesday in the case surrounding an infant boy born in Texas after his surrogate mother refused to terminate the child’s life at the request of his biological parents.
When the child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening condition, 20 weeks into the pregnancy, the biological parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, asked McKenna West, the surrogate mother, to terminate the pregnancy. West refused and fled from Alaska to Texas to give birth to the child, whom she calls “Gabriel” and the biological parents call “Rumi.”
Gilkar and Ahmed alleged that in refusing to terminate the pregnancy, West breached her surrogacy contract. The couple characterized West’s refusal as “malicious” and “outrageous” and sued West for more than $100,000.
After the birth of the child in August, West asked the Supreme Court to halt a California court order that recognizes the biological parents as the parents of the child.
In the emergency request, West’s lawyers said that without intervention, West will “receive no further information about the child she carried for 37 weeks and fought to save.”
West said she believed the couple would not provide the 5-week-old with the life-saving care needed to treat his condition and sought conservatorship to allow her a say in the child’s medical treatment.
Gilkar and Ahmed have denied the claims that they would not provide adequate care, calling West “unstable” and saying she is “making us run from doctor to doctor, state to state with our baby.”
“She’s trying to take him,” Gilkar testified last month, according to NBC.
Justice Elena Kagan, who handles appeals cases out of California, denied West’s request for conservatorship without providing a written explanation.
The Texas Supreme Court ruled last week to allow the baby to be moved to California, where his biological parents live and where the baby will continue to receive medical care while recovering from the first of three major heart surgeries to treat his condition.
“Sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter,” the court stated in the ruling.
The infant is expected to continue receiving critical medical care
Adam Wolf, an attorney for the couple, said that West’s legal filings “have sought to undermine Rumi’s parents’ right to provide him with the care he needs,” according to The Texas Tribune.
Lawyers for the couple said the couple is “providing the precise medical care for their child” that West desires and “they are committed to doing so for the rest of his life.”
The lawyers added that they are “truly grateful that Rumi can continue receiving the treatment he needs to survive, and that he will not be stripped away from what has been described by doctors as the excellent care of his parents,” The New York Times reports.
West’s attorney, Lincoln Davis Wilson, said that while West was disappointed in the ruling, she “takes great comfort in how these legal proceedings have prompted the contracting parents to say they are committed to provide the baby with the lifesaving care he needs.”
“That’s what McKenna has been fighting for from day one,” Wilson said.