Surrogate Mother Sued After Refusing Abortion

A surrogate mother refused to end her pregnancy after doctors found a serious heart defect, and now the couple who hired her is suing her for keeping the baby.

Quick Take

Alaska nurse McKenna West was a surrogate for a Los Angeles couple, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar.
At 20 weeks, doctors found the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious heart defect.
West says the couple pressured her to abort; the couple denies this and says she broke their contract.
West gave birth in Texas, and the couple is now suing her for more than $100,000.

A Heart Diagnosis Changes Everything

McKenna West, a 28-year-old nurse from Anchorage, agreed to carry a baby for a California couple through a surrogacy contract. At 20 weeks, an ultrasound found the baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a defect where the left side of the heart doesn’t grow right. Babies born with it need several surgeries and face a lifetime of medical care.

West says the intended parents asked her to get an abortion once they learned of the diagnosis, and that they largely stopped talking to her directly after that. The couple, through their lawyers, denies ever asking her to end the pregnancy. That single disagreement now sits at the center of a much bigger legal fight.

West says her surrogacy contract included a clause letting the intended parents demand termination if a serious birth defect showed up, backed by a financial penalty as high as $250,000 if she refused. She refused anyway, telling supporters she couldn’t go through with ending a pregnancy she says felt like her own son. That choice set off the legal battle now playing out in three states.

A Contract Clash Over Whose Decision It Was

Surrogacy contracts often give intended parents the right to demand an abortion if a doctor finds a severe fetal problem. West argues that clause asked her to hand over control of her own body, something she says she couldn’t accept once she felt connected to the baby she calls Gabriel. The couple counters that she agreed to the terms in writing and broke a legal deal.

Court filings from the couple argue West violated the surrogacy agreement outright, and that a California court already ruled she has no legal or physical custody rights over the child. Their new lawsuit seeks over $100,000 from West, covering money paid to her during the pregnancy and damages tied to the alleged breach.

Texas Becomes the Deciding Battleground

West left Alaska and traveled to Texas to give birth, a state where abortion law would not enforce a contract clause demanding termination over a fetal diagnosis. She gave birth to the baby in Dallas, and the intended parents quickly won a temporary restraining order keeping her from seeing or holding him.

West is now fighting that restraining order, arguing Texas law presumes she is the child’s legal mother since she gave birth there. A Texas court has separately ordered area hospitals to keep providing the baby’s medical care while the custody fight continues, a sign judges are treating his treatment as urgent and separate from the parentage dispute.

Surrogacy law experts say the case highlights a real gap in how states handle these disputes, since there’s no single federal rule governing surrogacy contracts, custody, or the enforceability of abortion clauses. When a birth happens in one state, the contract was signed in another, and the intended parents live in a third, courts can end up pulling in different directions.

🚨The biological parents who demanded an ab*rtion are now suing the surrogate who refused to k*ll the baby!!

McKenna West, a 28-year-old nurse and surrogate, carried a pregnancy for Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed.

Around 20 weeks the baby was diagnosed with hypoplastic left… pic.twitter.com/5mB04Q7aee

— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) August 20, 2026

Legal scholars have long noted that no American court has ever forced a surrogate to abort against her will, even when a contract technically allowed it, because courts generally treat that kind of bodily decision as hers alone. That legal reality favors West’s core argument, even as the couple presses their breach-of-contract and custody claims through the courts.