DALLAS — An Alaska nurse who gave birth in Dallas is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the infant from being moved out of Texas, saying she fears the child’s biological parents could take him from a Dallas hospital as soon as this week.
McKenna West, 28, delivered the boy on Aug. 12. He was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a defect that limits blood flow and typically requires staged surgeries beginning in the first days of life, according to The Dallas Morning News, The Texas Tribune and The New York Post. West calls the child Gabriel. Los Angeles couple Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, who contracted with West as a surrogate, named him Rumi.
West’s lawyers filed an emergency application last week and on Monday submitted an updated brief seeking a faster stay, the Post reported. They said an earlier timeline “appears to have been too conservative” and asked for an administrative stay by 1 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday. West wants to halt a California parentage order, later recognized by a Dallas judge, that treats Gilkar and Ahmed as the legal parents.
A Dallas court on Sept. 2 dismissed West from the Texas case and deferred to California, the Tribune and Morning News reported. The parents’ attorney, Lee Budner, said they had defeated West’s claims “in three different courts in three different states.”
The dispute began after a mid-pregnancy diagnosis. The surrogacy contract allowed termination for a fetal anomaly. West refused, left Alaska for Texas — where most abortions are banned — and gave birth here. Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in August, seeking life-sustaining care. The baby underwent open-heart surgery days after birth. Gilkar has testified West is trying to take their child. West has said she wants the baby to receive needed treatment and has offered to drop a custody fight if that care is guaranteed, according to her lawyers as reported by the Post.
The child remains hospitalized in Dallas. The Supreme Court has not ruled.
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