According to the abortion-isms of old, women have the “right to choose” what happens to the babies they carry. “Her body, her choice,” they shout. The wild, wild west that is third-party reproduction, however, claims to be an exception to that rule if a contract clause compelling abortion exists.
That’s exactly what happened to single mom surrogate McKenna West, who refused to abort the baby boy she was carrying after the Californians who paid to create him in a lab via in vitro fertilization (IVF) demanded it over the child’s severe, yet treatable, heart condition diagnosis.
Abortion propaganda dictates that West had the right to make that decision. Even the court that forbid West from contact with the baby after birth acknowledged “that nothing in this order limits the right of the surrogate mother to make decisions to safeguard her own health or the health of the pregnancy.”
Instead, West’s refusal to abort was contested by the commissioning parents, prompting her to flee her home state of Alaska to Texas to get the unborn baby the medical care and legal protection he needed to have a chance of life outside the womb.
West succeeded, but the victory did not come without a severe cost to her and the baby.
Gabriel was ultimately born on August 12. An order from the same Texas court that compelled doctors to treat him for hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), however, prevented West from “seeing or holding the baby she carried and fought to protect.” Days later, the same people who demanded a literal death sentence for their baby boy were granted custody of him.
Even though Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed fought to abort Gabriel and deprive West of “consent to the life-saving surgery for Gabriel after he is born,” they pretended through a statement from their lawyer that they always wanted the best for their child.
“Right now, our clients are continuing to place their baby’s health and well-being first, following the advice of the baby’s medical team, as they always have and just as any loving parent would,” attorney Lee Budner claimed.
Budner further painted West’s decision to save their son’s life as a “baseless attempt to interfere with his medical care” and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s involvement in securing Gabriel’s emergency care as “political theater.” CBS reprinted the claims uncritically.
A majority of rent-a-womb contracts contain provisions that allow the people who paid to create the baby to demand abortion for genetic defects, triplets, or simply on a whim. Even the agreements created specifically to cater to couples and surrogates who claim to be pro-life don’t protect babies nor the women carrying them from the risk and harms of abortion. The surrogates such as West who resist such calls for abortion are subject not only to emotional and mental turmoil, but also lawsuits and custody battles that could financially ruin them.
Anyone with a brain knows that abortion activists’ claims that bodily autonomy trumps all was always a myth. Babies in the womb, after all, have their own body which yields a detectable beating heart as early as six weeks post-conception.
The increase in surrogacy-related disputes in the news cycle further confirms that “her body, her choice” was never an honest or factual claim. Insistence from intended parents that a piece of paper takes precedent over the lives and wellbeing of a surrogate and a baby because they paid for the pregnancy is the opposite of the “empowerment” abortion activists preach.
Surrogacy exploits vulnerable women and puts them at the center of impossible decisions. More importantly, it denies children’s natural rights to life, to a mother and father, and to freedom from commodification.
Abortion fundamentally does the same. It is not empowering to kill off unborn babies. In fact, it’s not only dehumanizing but also puts women in danger and ignores data detailing the devastating consequences of abortion regret.
Long gone are the days of “safe, legal, and rare” and logically bare “bodily autonomy” maxims. Here are the days of unlimited abortion on demand, especially for couples who are paying women to gestate their child. Even babies born alive are not safe from the clutches of an ideology that prides itself on cruelty at any cost.
Pro-lifers and the states partnering with them to protect unborn life have worked for decades to expose the dishonesty governing abortion activism. Until and unless the risks posed by abortion and the propaganda accompanying it are addressed within the context of surrogacy, however, lives like baby Gabriel’s are in peril.
