This week, a Texas court heard arguments in a legal fight between a California couple and their surrogate over a newborn with a serious heart condition. The case has drawn the attention of anti-abortion activists pushing for new restrictions on surrogacy. Amna Nawaz discussed the case with Shefali Luthra, reproductive health reporter for The 19th News.
Amna Nawaz:
This week, a Texas court heard arguments in a legal fight between a California couple and their surrogate over a newborn with a serious heart condition. The case has drawn the attention of anti-abortion rights activists pushing for new restrictions on surrogacy.
For more, I’m joined by Shefali Luthra. She’s a reproductive health reporter for The 19th News.
Welcome. Thanks for being here.
Shefali Luthra, The 19th News: Thanks for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So this case involves a California couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. They struggled to conceive on their own, and it involves their surrogate, a woman named McKenna West, who’s a nurse from Alaska. How did this case end up in court?
Shefali Luthra:
So, a point about halfway through the pregnancy, the couple received a diagnosis that the at that point fetus had this anomaly that you mentioned, HLHS.
It’s one of these more complicated diagnoses. It’s what we call a gray diagnosis, where there’s no guarantee that the child will die, no guarantee the child will live, but best case scenario, you will require a lot of medical care and have a very difficult life.
At this point, the couple has acknowledged that they asked about an abortion. And what they say is initially the surrogate said yes, and then she changed her mind and cut off contact with them. What she testified yesterday is that, at this point, she got connected with an anti-abortion group.
They got her in touch with lawyers. They flew her to Texas, which is where she is now. They are keeping her up there, they are covering her legal fees. And, in Texas, abortion is not allowed. The state attorney general also got involved. She did not terminate the pregnancy. She instead gave birth.
The baby is now there, has received surgery, and the ongoing legal fight is essentially over who has custody of this child and who will get to make legal decisions for his health.
Amna Nawaz:
So this legal fight is unfolding. There was a California court that previously ruled in June that this couple, the biological parents, are the parents, that they have custody. Ms. West is seeking to reverse that, to gain custody of this baby boy.
There was a very dramatic, emotional hearing around this yesterday. What happened?
Shefali Luthra:
In this hearing, the biological parents talked about the lengths to which they have gone to try and have a child. And it’s quite, quite devastating what they have experienced. They went through eight rounds of IVF. They could not successfully get pregnant.
She then had a hysterectomy, and at this point they got a surrogate. And that is how they got in touch with McKenna West. The other really, I think, pivotal thing about this hearing was that the lawyers for McKenna West repeatedly tried to suggest that the parents could not be trusted to make health care decisions for this child because they had sought an abortion at one point.
And the parents made very clear they wanted this child. They worked very, very hard to have a child, and they love this child, and they do intend to do whatever they can to keep him alive. But the real core of this dispute over who has this baby’s best interest at heart really led to a very emotional and very tense hearing between these two parties.
Amna Nawaz:
I mean, one of the reasons we’re talking about it now, because it’s gained national attention, is because a lot of these, as you mentioned, anti-abortion right groups have intervened, have jumped in to support McKenna West.
Why has this surrogacy case drawn their attention in this way?
Shefali Luthra:
It’s a natural way in to discuss surrogacy for them because it is about abortion on some level, right? There’s this dispute over the possibility of terminating the pregnancy.
But there is also a broader conversation happening in the anti-abortion movement about fertility treatments such as IVF and surrogacy. And many abortion opponents oppose surrogacy very strongly. They would love to see it banned, and many I have spoken to have said that they are hoping this case by putting attention on surrogacy can give them ammunition to get some kind of ban on the practice enacted in Texas next year.
Amna Nawaz:
The case is still unfolding, but what could be the implications here? Could they be broader than surrogacy and to other fertility treatments, IVF and egg freezing, for example?
Shefali Luthra:
Absolutely.
And, really, no matter how we get a ruling on this case, the attention it has put on surrogacy, opening the door to these kinds of restrictions really does in some ways lay the groundwork possibly for restrictions on IVF as well.
A lot of the arguments that you hear against surrogacy, what we hear from abortion opponents is that it commodifies pregnancy, isn’t really natural, is how they describe it, in terms of who the parents of a child are, are arguments also that they make about IVF.
And so I think, realistically, if we see this case lead to restrictions, it’s a starting point to a conversation about who is able to access IVF and where it is legal and for whom.
Amna Nawaz:
We know the case is going to unfold. You will continue to follow it and we will follow your reporting.
Shefali Luthra of The 19th News, thank you for being here.
Shefali Luthra:
Thanks again.
