Surrogate mother faces $100,000 lawsuit from biological parents for refusing to abort baby
Surrogate mother McKenna West, a cardiac nurse from Alaska, gave birth to a baby boy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome in Dallas, Texas, on Aug. 12, 2026. California couple Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed sued West for over $100,000, claiming she breached their surrogacy contract by refusing to abort the child after a fetal abnormality diagnosis. West fled to Texas seeking state protection for the baby, citing her medical knowledge that the newborn had a good chance of survival if treated at Dallas Children’s Hospital, and has been barred from contact by court order. A hearing on parentage and related issues is scheduled for Aug. 25 in Dallas County, while the couple claims they want lifesaving treatment for the child and are pursuing removal of the court order.
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Surrogate mother McKenna West, a cardiac nurse from Alaska, gave birth on 12 August 2026 in Dallas, Texas, to a boy diagnosed prenatally with hypoplastic left‑heart syndrome—a serious but treatable heart defect. West named the infant Gabriel; the intended parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed of California, call him Rumi. The couple sued West for more than $100,000, alleging she breached their surrogacy contract, which contained a clause allowing them to request an abortion if fetal abnormalities were detected. 1 3
West refused the abortion request in April and subsequently fled to Texas, seeking the state’s protection for the child. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained a court order that mandates lifesaving treatment for the newborn and bars his removal from the state. The baby has already undergone his first cardiac surgery and remains in Dallas Children’s Hospital under the order. A hearing on parentage and related issues is set for 25 August 2026 in Dallas County. 1
The contracting couple stopped paying pregnancy‑related expenses after West declined the abortion. Their attorney, Lee Budner, described the situation as “political theater” by West and the state, while West’s op‑ed in the New York Post emphasized that no woman should be forced to kill a baby and that every child deserves a chance to live. 1
Catholic and pro‑life commentators have used the case to critique commercial surrogacy. Irene Alexander, associate professor of moral theology at the University of Dallas, called aborting a treatable child “an Amazon mentality” and reiterated the Church’s teaching that surrogacy is gravely immoral because it separates procreation from marital union. 1
Joe Zalot of the National Catholic Bioethics Center said the dispute shows how surrogacy contracts denigrate both the surrogate and the pre‑born child by permitting termination of a pregnancy based on fetal anomalies. Live Action spokesperson Kimberly Bird called abortion clauses in surrogacy contracts “atrocious” and urged a nationwide ban, noting that many countries already prohibit the practice. 1 3
The controversy has sparked broader legislative interest; Colombian lawmakers have introduced a bill to outlaw surrogacy, joining dozens of nations where the practice is already illegal. 1
Surrogacy contracts must respect Catholic moral teachings on life
Surrogacy contracts cannot be made morally acceptable merely by adding protections for the unborn child. Catholic teaching requires respect for human life, but it also judges surrogacy itself incompatible with the dignity of the child, the woman, marriage, and human procreation.
Every human life is sacred from conception because it is created by God and remains under his authority. The child therefore may never be treated as a product commissioned, selected, transferred, or rejected according to contractual terms.
The 2024 declaration Dignitas Infinita states that surrogacy reduces “the immensely worthy child” to an object and insists:
“A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
It adds that the desire to have a child, however understandable, cannot become a supposed “right to a child” that disregards the child’s own dignity.
Consequently, a contract clause promising that a child will not be aborted, selectively reduced, discarded because of disability, or subjected to harmful experimentation would be morally important as a protection of the child’s life—but it would not transform the underlying surrogacy arrangement into a licit act.
Catholic teaching rejects the deliberate killing of an innocent human being at every stage of development. This includes abortion and the destruction of human embryos. Evangelium Vitae teaches that human life is sacred even in its initial phase, when the human being is still an embryo in the mother’s womb.
Therefore, provisions commonly associated with some surrogacy arrangements—such as:
cannot be accepted. A contract cannot authorize what is morally evil, and a person cannot surrender the fundamental right of an innocent child to life.
The Church’s opposition to abortion is not conditional on the child’s health, the parents’ preferences, the financial interests of the parties, or the child’s anticipated quality of life. Direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral.
The Church’s position is broader than opposition to abortion. The 1987 instruction Donum Vitae rejects surrogate motherhood because it is contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of human procreation. It also separates genetic parenthood, gestational motherhood, and responsibility for raising the child.
This applies whether the arrangement is:
In either case, the child is conceived through a prior agreement that the woman will surrender the child after birth. Donum Vitae describes this as contrary to the child’s right to be conceived, carried, born, and raised within the proper unity of marriage and parenthood.
The USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives therefore gives a direct norm:
“Because of the dignity of the child and of marriage, and because of the uniqueness of the mother-child relationship, participation in contracts or arrangements for surrogate motherhood is not permitted.”
It also warns that commercial surrogacy can denigrate women, especially those experiencing poverty.
A contract may appear voluntary, but Catholic moral reasoning asks whether the structure itself treats a person as an instrument. Dignitas Infinita teaches that surrogacy violates the woman’s dignity whether she is coerced or freely chooses it, because she is detached from the child she carries and made a means serving the desires or financial interests of others.
This concern is especially serious where poverty, unequal bargaining power, or economic desperation is involved. Payment may turn motherhood and pregnancy into commercial services, while the child becomes the object of exchange. The Ukrainian Catholic Catechism describes this as trafficking in motherhood and reducing the child to an object of commerce.
Thus, a morally serious contract would need to protect not only the child’s physical life but also the dignity, bodily integrity, conscience, and freedom of the woman. Yet because surrogacy intrinsically establishes the childbearing relationship as a commissioned service and requires the surrender of the child, these safeguards do not resolve the fundamental moral problem.
If parties have already entered into a surrogacy arrangement and a demand is made to abort, destroy embryos, or undergo a gravely harmful procedure, they must not cooperate in that evil. The child’s life must be protected, and coercion should be resisted through appropriate medical, pastoral, legal, and civil assistance.
At the same time, Catholic teaching distinguishes the objective wrongness of the arrangement from personal culpability. A woman may be pressured, deceived, economically exploited, or placed in a frightening medical situation. She should not be treated merely as a wrongdoer; she deserves protection, truthful counsel, practical support, and care. The child likewise must be welcomed and defended, regardless of how the child was conceived.
The Church’s teaching also does not imply that a child born through surrogacy is unwanted by God or lacks dignity. The child is fully a human person, loved by God, and must be treated with the same respect and care as every other child. The moral judgment concerns the reproductive practice and contractual structure, not the worth of the child.
A surrogacy contract must never permit abortion, embryo destruction, selective reduction, or exploitation. Those acts violate the inviolable dignity of innocent human life. But Catholic teaching goes further: surrogacy contracts themselves are not morally permissible, even when they contain life-protective clauses, because they commercialize or instrumentalize the child, separate the dimensions of parenthood, and compromise the dignity of the woman and marriage. A child is a gift of God, not the object of a contract.