A surrogate mother who fled to Texas rather than abort a baby diagnosed with a severe heart condition has now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, arguing the biological parents plan to let the child die in hospice instead of pursuing life-saving surgery.

McKenna West filed an emergency application with Justice Elena Kagan seeking to block a California court order that recognized Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar as the legal parents of the four-week-old boy, NewsNation reported. West wants custody or conservatorship of the infant, whom she calls Gabriel. Ahmed and Gilkar call him Rumi.

The baby was born August 12 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition that prevents normal blood flow through the heart and can cause death within days or weeks without treatment. He underwent his first of three anticipated open-heart surgeries on August 17, five days after birth, and remains in critical condition with potential complications, according to the parents' attorney.

The Supreme Court has not said whether it will hear the case. If it does, the justices will wade into a collision of state surrogacy laws, parental rights, abortion policy, and medical decision-making authority, with a newborn's life in the balance.

West refused an abortion and fled to Texas

The dispute began during the 20th week of West's pregnancy, when a routine checkup revealed the fetal heart defect. Ahmed and Gilkar, a California couple who are the child's biological parents, asked West to undergo an abortion at 23 weeks. West refused.

The two sides tell sharply different stories about what happened next. West says Ahmed and Gilkar pressured her to terminate the pregnancy. The couple says West knew from the start that they would end the pregnancy if a fetal abnormality appeared, and that she violated the terms of the surrogacy contract by continuing it. Breitbart reported that the biological parents threatened to sue West for $250,000 if she carried the baby to term.

West chose to leave Alaska, where she had been living, and travel to Texas, a state with a near-total ban on abortion, to give birth at a hospital equipped to treat the baby's condition. In a statement reported before the birth, West said she was appalled by the prospect of an abortion when the child's condition is treatable.

West put her position plainly: "Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying, including me... Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life."

The case exposes a gap in American law. No federal regulations govern surrogacy. Each state sets its own rules, and those rules can clash when the parties live in different states, as they do here, with a surrogate in Texas, biological parents in California, and a contract likely governed by one state's law or the other's.

California gave the parents legal custody; Texas ordered treatment

While West was still pregnant, a California court issued an order recognizing Ahmed and Gilkar as the child's legal parents. That order is the one West now wants the Supreme Court to block.

Texas authorities moved in a different direction. Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened in the case one day before the baby was born, vowing to guarantee the child received lifesaving medical care. A Texas judge then ordered the baby to remain in the state and receive treatment until a custody hearing could take place, Just The News reported.

Paxton did not hold back: "Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care."

But the Texas court also issued a restraining order, against West. Ahmed and Gilkar obtained the order, which bars the surrogate from seeing or holding the baby. Medical decision-making authority was assigned to the biological parents, though under court oversight.

West then tried to win conservatorship of the infant in Texas court. She lost. A hearing took place in Dallas on August 25, where Nausheen Gilkar, wiping away tears, told the court: "He's our child. He's the love of our lives."

The Supreme Court has faced similar collisions between parental rights and government authority before, but surrogacy disputes at this level are rare, and this one involves a child who may not survive long enough for the courts to finish deliberating.

West's lawyers warn the baby could die before Texas courts act

In her emergency filing, West argued that the California order effectively strips her of any role in protecting the child she carried. Her attorneys wrote that "the stakes of the decisions below are enormous," contending West has been "denied any information about or control over the medically fragile child," AP News reported.

The filing raised an urgent concern: "Relief later in Texas proceedings may only restore her right to protect a child that has already passed." In other words, West's legal team believes that by the time a Texas custody hearing runs its course, the baby could be dead, placed in hospice care by parents who, in West's telling, never wanted him to live.

Ahmed and Gilkar's attorney pushed back on that characterization, saying the child is in critical condition and appears to have potential complications. The couple has not publicly stated they intend to move the baby to hospice, but West's legal team has framed the fight around that fear since before the birth.

The baby's medical outlook is serious by any measure. Hypoplastic left heart syndrome typically requires a series of surgeries in the first years of life, and some children eventually need a heart transplant. Even with treatment, lifelong complications are common. Without treatment, the condition is fatal within days or weeks.

The Supreme Court's current term has already produced several high-profile rulings, but few carry stakes this immediate. Whether the justices agree to intervene, and how quickly, could determine whether this child receives the next round of surgery or not.

A surrogacy contract with an "abortion on demand" clause

Fox News reported that West was allegedly threatened with more than $250,000 in financial penalties for continuing the pregnancy against the biological parents' wishes. The surrogacy contract reportedly contained a clause allowing the intended parents to direct an abortion in the event of a fetal abnormality, what critics have called an "abortion on demand" provision.

West's case also raises a constitutional question that legal observers will watch closely: whether challenging a court's jurisdiction over a surrogacy dispute constitutes consent to that jurisdiction. West fought the California parentage order from Texas, but the California court proceeded without her physical presence.

The broader policy failure is hard to miss. Congress has never passed a federal surrogacy law. The result is a patchwork where a contract signed in one state can be enforced by a court in another, while a third state's attorney general steps in to protect the child caught in the middle. The lack of a uniform legal framework leaves surrogates, intended parents, and, most critically, children exposed to exactly the kind of jurisdictional chaos now playing out across three states and headed to the nation's highest court.

Reproductive choices and their legal consequences have drawn increasing public attention in recent years, from high-profile discussions about fertility procedures to state-level battles over abortion access. This case sits at the intersection of all of them.

The Supreme Court's willingness to act quickly on emergency applications has varied in recent terms. West's lawyers are betting the justices will see a dying infant as reason enough to step in now rather than wait.

One child, three states, and no clear answer

What is clear is this: a baby boy is lying in a Texas hospital after open-heart surgery, and the two sides fighting over his future cannot agree on whether he should receive the next operation or be allowed to die. A California court says his biological parents make that call. A Texas attorney general says the child deserves lifesaving care. A surrogate who carried him for nine months has been barred from even holding him.

The Supreme Court has not indicated whether it will take up the emergency appeal. Every day it waits, the window for the child's next surgery narrows.

A country that cannot make a coherent surrogacy law has left a four-week-old baby's life to be sorted out by competing courts in three different states. That is not a legal system working as designed, it is one failing the most vulnerable person in the room.