Justice Elena Kagan denied Alaska surrogate McKenna West's last-ditch appeal to block a California custody order, a ruling that leaves the biological parents in control of a baby born with a serious heart defect.

Kagan acted Tuesday without issuing a written decision, ending West's multi-state legal campaign to retain authority over the baby boy she carried for 37 weeks and refused to abort. The denial, first reported by the New York Post, means a California court order recognizing Los Angeles couple Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed as the child's legal parents stands unchallenged.

Every court that has heard West's arguments, in California, Texas, at the appellate level, and now the nation's highest court, has ruled against her. The case has become a tangled collision of surrogacy contracts, state abortion laws, and competing claims over who gets to decide what happens to a medically fragile infant.

A $60,000 surrogacy deal unraveled at 20 weeks

West, 28, a single mother of two from Alaska, agreed to carry Gilkar and Ahmed's child for $60,000 under a surrogacy contract. That contract included a clause permitting termination if doctors found an "anomaly" during the pregnancy.

At 20 weeks, doctors diagnosed the baby with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a severe condition in which the left side of the heart is critically underdeveloped. Gilkar and Ahmed asked West to terminate. She refused, saying she could not in good faith go through with an abortion.

What followed was a legal fight that stretched across three states. West fled to Texas, where abortion is illegal and where state law would recognize her, not the biological parents, as the child's mother. The baby was born August 12 in a Dallas hospital.

West's attorneys have argued that Gilkar and Ahmed repeatedly "refused" to commit to providing appropriate medical care for the baby's heart condition. West has said she believes the couple would not pursue the treatment the child needs to survive. Her legal team told the Supreme Court that "the stakes of the decisions below are enormous," warning that West had been "denied any information about or control over the medically fragile child."

The biological parents tell a sharply different story. Their attorney, Adam Wolf, said the couple has been devoted to the baby's medical needs from the start.

Gilkar accused West of trying to steal her child

In a Dallas courtroom in late August, Gilkar broke down while describing the ordeal. She accused West of dragging the family through an exhausting legal gauntlet.

"She's making us run from doctor to doctor, state to state. With our baby, she's trying to take him."

Gilkar also spoke about the child, whom the couple calls Rumi, while West calls him Gabriel, in deeply personal terms: "He's the most beautiful person I've ever seen. He's the love of our lives."

A Texas judge sided with the biological parents, ruling that West could not make decisions about the baby's treatment or custody. That judge upheld the California court order. The Texas Supreme Court later cleared the way for the child to be transferred to California, where Gilkar and Ahmed have arranged ongoing medical care.

The baby underwent open-heart surgery at a Dallas hospital after birth. Fox News reported the child has suffered potential post-operative complications, though specific details about his current condition remain unclear.

West lost her conservatorship bid in Texas before turning to the Supreme Court

West filed for conservatorship in Texas courts, a legal move that would have given her decision-making power over the baby's medical care. She lost that bid on September 2, according to court records referenced in her Supreme Court filing.

Earlier this month, she took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court with an emergency appeal. Kagan handles emergency matters arising from California's federal circuit, which made her the justice responsible for the petition. She denied it without explanation, a common practice in emergency appeals, where justices rarely issue written opinions.

West had previously escalated the custody fight to the Supreme Court after exhausting her options in lower courts. Her attorneys warned that without intervention, she would receive no further information about the child she carried and fought to protect.

Wolf, the attorney for Gilkar and Ahmed, framed the denial as a decisive end to West's legal campaign. In a statement obtained by TMZ, he laid out the record bluntly:

"Ms. West's legal filings across three states, numerous courts of appeals, and now the U.S. Supreme Court have sought to undermine Rumi's parents' right to provide him with the care he needs. Those efforts have been rejected by every single court."

Wolf added that the couple was "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."

Biological parents are suing West for at least $100,000

Beyond the custody dispute, Gilkar and Ahmed have filed a lawsuit against West seeking at least $100,000. The basis and current status of that suit remain unclear from available court records.

Lawyers for the couple have maintained that the parents are "devoted to protecting their baby now" and have ensured "their child receives the lifesaving care he needs, and they are committed to doing so for the rest of his life," Just The News reported.

Several questions remain unanswered. West's attorney, whose name has not been publicly identified in court filings, has not said whether any legal avenue remains open after the Supreme Court denial. The baby's precise medical status after surgery is unknown publicly. And the specific care commitments West's team claims Gilkar and Ahmed refused to make have never been spelled out in detail in any court filing made public so far.

What is clear is the legal scoreboard. West filed in California courts, Texas trial courts, Texas appellate courts, the Texas Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. She lost everywhere. The Washington Examiner noted that Kagan's denial effectively confirms the biological parents' legal parenthood under the California order.

Surrogacy law in the United States remains a patchwork. What is legal and enforceable in California, where intended parents can secure pre-birth parentage orders, clashes with states like Texas, where the woman who gives birth is presumed to be the legal mother. West tried to exploit that gap. Courts in both states closed it.

Contracts matter. Courts enforced one here, across state lines, over the objections of a woman who carried a child and grew attached to him. Whether that outcome protects a sick baby or abandons a woman who tried to save one depends on which set of facts you trust, but every judge who weighed the evidence picked the same side.