Supreme Court declines to intervene in custody dispute between California parents and surrogate
Supreme Court declined to intervene in a custody dispute involving California parents and surrogate McKenna West. The case arose after West refused to allow the parents to abort the fetus diagnosed with a serious heart defect and sought conservatorship for the newborn. The parents sued West for breach of the surrogacy agreement, which required abortion upon fetal abnormality, but the court left the dispute to lower courts. The decision reflects the Court's typical emergency appeal procedure and highlights ongoing legal tensions over surrogacy and abortion rights.
8 days ago
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in a custody dispute involving California parents, their surrogate, and a baby diagnosed before birth with a serious heart defect. The decision leaves the dispute to lower courts while the child remains under medical care in Texas. 1
Justice Elena Kagan denied the emergency request on September 22 in a brief order that did not explain the court’s reasoning. Kagan handled the matter because she oversees appeals from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes California. 1
The denial did not resolve the parties’ underlying custody or parental-rights claims. It declined the Supreme Court’s immediate intervention in the case. 1
McKenna West was hired by Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed to serve as their surrogate. After the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart defect, the couple asked West to have an abortion, but she refused. 1
West traveled to Texas, where most abortions are restricted, and gave birth to a boy in August. The child, who was five weeks old at the time of the report, subsequently underwent surgery at a Dallas hospital; his biological parents also traveled there. 1
Gilkar and Ahmed sued West for breach of contract, citing a provision in their surrogacy agreement that required an abortion in the event of a fetal-abnormality diagnosis. West, in turn, sought a conservatorship over the child, arguing that the parents’ request for an abortion indicated they would not care for him. 1
The parents denied that allegation in court filings and said they intended to provide the child with medical care. A California trial court had ruled that Gilkar and Ahmed were the child’s legal parents, while West’s attorneys argued that the case should have been handled in Alaska, where West lives. 1
The report places the dispute in the context of Catholic teaching that human life is sacred from conception to natural death and that directly intended abortion is opposed. 1
It also notes that Catholic documents including Donum Vitae and Dignitas Infinita criticize surrogacy as violating the dignity and rights of women and children. 1*
Investigate Catholic doctrine on surrogacy and abortion rights
Catholic doctrine rejects both surrogacy and abortion as practices contrary to human dignity. It recognizes a fundamental right to life from conception, but it does not recognize a “right to abortion” or a “right to a child.” Instead, law and public policy should protect unborn children, support mothers and families, and prevent the exploitation of women and children.
The Church’s objection is not simply that another person is involved in reproduction. It concerns the way surrogacy separates procreation from the marital union and risks treating both the woman and child as instruments or commodities.
The 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita teaches that a child has an inherent dignity from conception and a right to a genuinely human origin. The desire to have a child, however legitimate, cannot become an enforceable “right to a child” that disregards the child’s dignity.
Surrogacy is condemned for two principal reasons:
Accordingly, Catholic health-care directives state that participation in surrogate-motherhood contracts is not permitted because of the dignity of the child, the dignity of marriage, and the unique mother–child relationship. Commercial surrogacy is additionally criticized for exploiting poorer women.
The Church’s position therefore applies to both commercial and so-called altruistic arrangements, although commercial payment adds a particularly serious dimension of commodification. The supplied material does not provide a complete analysis of every possible legal arrangement or of the civil-law status of children born through surrogacy.
Catholic teaching holds that human life is sacred and inviolable from conception. The unborn child is not merely potential human life but a human being deserving protection.
Direct abortion—meaning abortion intended either as the goal or as the means to another goal—is intrinsically wrong. No motive, including poverty, family hardship, threats to social standing, or concern for the child’s future, can make the deliberate killing of an innocent human being morally permissible.
This is not merely a disciplinary rule but a doctrine grounded in natural law, Scripture, Christian Tradition, and the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Evangelium Vitae describes direct abortion as the deliberate killing of an innocent human being and teaches that no circumstance or law can make such an act morally licit.
The Church also rejects abortion as a claimed individual or civil “right.” John Paul II taught that the deliberate destruction of human life is outside the legitimate competence of individuals or groups. The USCCB consequently states that abortion is never morally acceptable and that laws legitimizing it are profoundly unjust.
Catholic teaching distinguishes abortion from medical treatment that is not itself directed toward killing the child.
A procedure whose direct purpose is to cause the fetus’s death is never permitted. But a necessary treatment aimed at saving the mother’s life may be morally permissible when the child’s death is an unintended and unavoidable side effect, rather than the means or objective of the treatment.
This distinction is often called the principle of double effect: an action with a good object may be allowed despite a foreseen bad side effect, provided the bad effect is not intended and the good cannot reasonably be achieved otherwise. It does not justify choosing abortion as the treatment itself.
Catholic doctrine distinguishes moral truth from the question of how civil law should be framed. The Church holds that the state has a duty to protect vulnerable human beings, especially unborn children, and that fundamental rights do not depend upon government granting them.
The USCCB therefore supports legal protection for unborn children and policies that reduce pressures leading to abortion, including assistance for pregnant women, children, and families. Catholic political engagement should thus combine opposition to abortion with practical solidarity: health care, material assistance, adoption support, and protection from coercion.
Surrogacy and abortion are distinct moral questions, but they can overlap in assisted reproduction. In vitro fertilization and related procedures may involve the creation, selection, freezing, or destruction of embryos; the Church regards the destruction of human embryos as incompatible with their dignity and right to life.
The underlying principle is consistent: human beings must never be treated as objects—whether as unwanted pregnancies to be eliminated, embryos to be selected or discarded, children to be acquired contractually, or women’s bodies to be commercially rented.
In summary: Catholic doctrine affirms a right to life from conception, rejects abortion as a legitimate right, rejects surrogacy as incompatible with the dignity of the child and woman, and calls for laws and social policies that protect life while providing concrete support to mothers, families, and children.