The travails of the surrogate mother McKenna West continue, as she now appeals her case to the Supreme Court. Originally from Alaska, West agreed to be a surrogate for a couple from California, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. When a doctor discovered that the baby had a serious yet treatable heart condition 20 weeks into the pregnancy, Gilkar and Ahmed demanded that West abort him.
Instead of complying with the order to obtain a late-term abortion, West kept the baby and took refuge in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained a court order mandating that treatment be provided. Paxton did so, he said, because Gilkar and Ahmed “refused to agree that they will consent to the life-saving surgery for Gabriel after he is born.” The child, whom West calls Gabriel but whom the intended couple call Rumi, was born just over a month ago and is currently receiving treatment in a Dallas hospital.
As it happens, this current fight over Gabriel-Rumi mirrors the famous story of King Solomon judging the case of the two women claiming to be the mother of the same child. After hearing both women speak, Solomon tells them that he will cut the child in half and give them equal parts. While one woman is fine with Solomon’s “equitable” solution, the other woman forfeits her claim in order to spare the child. Solomon then takes this as proof that the latter was the real mother since she cared about the child while the other did not.
The same dynamics appear in the conflict between West and the baby’s intended parents. By all available evidence, West has shown that she cares for the well-being of the baby whom she gestated and bore, while Gilkar and Ahmed have only shown that they originally wanted to kill the baby and even demanded a refund when this didn’t happen. In this case, there is no need to test their love by proposing to split the baby. The facts are clear for all to see.
Which is why, morally speaking, even if Gilkar and Ahmed say they have changed their minds about the baby and want to care for him, West still has a stronger claim. She has sacrificed everything and continues to fight for his well-being. She has demonstrated a deep understanding of the baby’s infinite dignity and value; the intended parents have sacrificed nothing and understand nothing.
Along with treating human beings as commodities to be bought and sold, this depressing absence of love and sacrifice is what makes commercial surrogacy so wrong. Not only do all children deserve a chance at life, but they also deserve to be truly loved. Gilkar can insist, “He’s the love of our lives,” but no one believes this. She and Ahmed paid for a child, wanted the surrogate mother to kill that child, and, in a just world, fully deserve to have this child taken away from them.
Although the courts officially granted custody to Gilkar and Ahmed earlier this month, West has filed an emergency brief “to the U.S. Supreme Court amid fears the baby she carried could soon be removed from Texas.” Understandably concerned about the fate of the baby under the care of Gilkar and Ahmed, she doesn’t believe “the baby will continue receiving the medical treatment he needs.”
For their part, Gilkar and Ahmed “have denied allegations that they would deny their son necessary medical care,” and Gilkar has said that Gabriel-Rumi is “the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.” While this sounds nice, it is entirely undermined by their original desire to end the baby’s life in the womb. Moreover, by taking the baby back to California, there will be less pressure to keep the baby alive. Everything would depend on the goodwill of the parents.
Besides illustrating the inhuman, exploitative nature of surrogacy, where a child is treated as a commodity, the story of West and her baby highlights the other serious problem: parental custody. Unlike adoption, where parents are rigorously vetted, couples using a surrogate face no such scrutiny. They could be sexual deviants who want a human plaything, eccentric Chinese billionaires who want to sire hundreds of children, or just dissatisfied adults who see little problem with killing their offspring for being defective.
This issue is further complicated by the widely varying policies on abortion across the country. Depending on the state, an unborn baby may be entitled to life, as in Texas, or subject to a parent’s whims and aborted at any stage of a pregnancy, as in California. Put another way, in Texas, an unborn baby is considered a person and thus has legal protections, but in California, an unborn baby is effectively considered a possession that can be disposed of for any reason.
And, with the disturbing widespread support of Lindsay Clancy revealing a growing tolerance for after-birth abortion (aka infanticide), questions about personhood and human rights are not exclusive to the unborn. Already, several states, now including Massachusetts, have legalized late-term abortions, a grisly procedure that involves cutting up viable infants in utero. The logical basis for this (that is, the baby is not a person and has no rights) can easily be extended to purposely denying treatment to infants born with health conditions — say, a serious heart condition.
All of this explains why McKenna West is fighting to keep the baby in Texas, so he is assured ongoing treatment. She has even said that she “would abandon her custody bid if she were assured he would continue to receive appropriate care.” Assuming the baby recovers completely, his parents would have less reason and fewer means to end his life.
