McKenna West’s emergency bid to take her surrogacy case to the Supreme Court is being ripped apart by the biological parents of the critically ill baby she carried. Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed’s attorney, Lee Budner, called West’s filing “defamatory lies about Rumi’s parents and his medical care, and mischaracterizations of the law”. He pointed out that courts in Alaska, California, and Texas have all ruled that Rumi’s parents are Omar and Nausheen, adding that the couple “spend every day at Rumi’s side in the neonatal cardiac intensive care unit, where he remains in critical condition”.
West, an Alaska cardiac nurse, filed an emergency application Wednesday asking Justice Elena Kagan to block a Los Angeles court decision that declared Gilkar and Ahmed the baby’s legal parents. She carried the child, whom she calls Gabriel, under a surrogacy agreement with the California couple, who call him Rumi. After a 20-week scan detected hypoplastic left heart syndrome, the couple asked West to terminate the pregnancy under their agreement. West refused, traveled to Texas, where most abortions are banned, and gave birth on August 12. The baby needed emergency open-heart surgery within days and remains in critical condition.
West argues she is now prevented from receiving information about the baby or advocating for his medical care. Her filing claims the couple could transfer the child to California for hospice care “despite his treatable condition” around September 17. A Texas judge dismissed West from the case on September 2, deferring to the California ruling. Gilkar told a Dallas court last month: “He’s our child. He’s the love of our lives”.
