McKenna West, the surrogate who refused to abort a baby diagnosed with a serious heart defect, has filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing the infant could be moved out of Texas before she can fight for his care.

West and her legal team filed an updated brief with the high court on Monday, warning that events in the multi-state custody battle are moving faster than expected. She asked Justice Elena Kagan, who handles emergency matters from the Ninth Circuit, to grant an administrative stay by 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday. Without it, West's attorneys argue, the baby could be transferred to California for hospice care while she remains shut out of decisions about the child's medical treatment.

The baby, referred to in court filings as Gabriel, was born on August 12 in Texas. He has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening condition that requires multiple surgeries but is treatable. West, 28, an Alaska resident, carried the child under a gestational surrogacy agreement with a California couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, arranged through Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists, LLC.

The dispute began when the baby was diagnosed with the heart defect at roughly 20 weeks. The commissioning parents asked West to terminate the pregnancy. She refused.

West fled to Texas after refusing the couple's demand for an abortion

West traveled to Texas to give birth, stating she did so to ensure access to specialized medical care for the infant. Texas law prohibits most abortions, a fact that added a layer of legal protection. She also filed for parentage and protective orders in both Alaska and Texas.

Gilkar and Ahmed filed a parentage action in Los Angeles Superior Court, arguing California had jurisdiction under the surrogacy agreement. West entered a special appearance in that court, a procedural move meant to challenge jurisdiction without submitting to it, and cited a forum-selection clause in the surrogacy contract that required any litigation to be held in Alaska.

The California trial court rejected that argument. It ruled that West's jurisdictional filings and attached exhibits constituted a "general appearance," meaning she had effectively consented to the court's authority. On that basis, the court entered an ex parte judgment of parentage, a ruling issued without a full hearing, declaring Gilkar and Ahmed the child's legal parents and denying West's custody claims.

That ruling traveled across state lines. A Texas court subsequently recognized the California judgment, named the couple as the baby's legal parents, and dismissed West from the case with prejudice, meaning she could not refile the same claim in that proceeding.

A Dallas judge ordered life-saving care over the parents' objections

Before the California ruling took effect in Texas, a Dallas court had already intervened on the baby's behalf. A judge ordered that life-saving medical care be provided upon the child's birth and barred anyone from withholding treatment or transferring the infant out of state pending a hearing.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped into the case, alleging the intended parents had refused consent for the heart surgery Gabriel's doctors recommended, the Norwood procedure, the first of three standard surgeries for hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Federal officials also warned Dallas hospitals not to deny life-saving care to the newborn.

Paxton framed the matter in blunt terms:

"Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care."

The restraining order placed medical decision-making authority with the intended parents, but under court-mandated requirements that the child receive treatment. The baby survived his first emergency surgery, though the legal battle over his future continued.

California's ruling stripped West of standing, and she says it violated due process

West's emergency application to the Supreme Court centers on a constitutional argument: that the California court violated federal due process by treating her jurisdictional defense as consent to be sued there. In her updated brief filed Monday, West's legal team, Alliance Defending Freedom and First & Fourteenth PLLC, argued that the case is advancing more quickly than anticipated and that immediate relief is necessary.

The practical stakes are stark. If no stay is granted, the commissioning parents could move Gabriel to California. West's filing characterizes that transfer as a move toward hospice care, a decision to manage the child's condition rather than pursue aggressive treatment. West would have no legal standing to intervene.

West's attorneys wrote that "relief was urgently needed," according to the New York Post.

The biological mother, Gilkar, has pushed back on West's framing. In a statement to a Dallas court, she said:

"She's making us run from doctor to doctor, state to state. With our baby, she's trying to take him."

The couple's attorneys argued in court filings that West harmed the baby by relocating to Texas, "requiring him to be born in Texas, away from his parents and the specialized cardiac team in Los Angeles that will provide his lifelong care."

Surrogacy law remains a patchwork, and this case exposes every gap

The dispute cuts across at least four jurisdictions, Alaska, Texas, California, and now the U.S. Supreme Court, and highlights how inconsistent American surrogacy law remains. The surrogacy agreement itself contained a forum-selection clause pointing to Alaska. The commissioning parents filed in California. A Texas court issued protective orders. And a California court's parentage ruling traveled to Texas and wiped out West's standing there.

As National Review noted, the case raises broader questions about whether commercial surrogacy reduces women to "gestational carriers" and babies to products, commodities whose fate is dictated by contract rather than by the child's medical needs or the surrogate's conscience.

Maya Shulman, a California surrogacy attorney and professor, offered a different lens. "You need to think about the quality of life for the baby," she told the Associated Press.

That framing, quality of life versus right to life, sits at the center of this fight. West and her legal team, backed by Alliance Defending Freedom, argue that Gabriel's condition is serious but treatable and that the Norwood procedure gives him a real chance. The commissioning parents and their attorneys argue that West overstepped the bounds of the surrogacy contract and that the child's care belongs in the hands of his legal parents.

The Supreme Court has shown a willingness to act on emergency applications with broad implications. Whether Justice Kagan or the full court intervenes here could set a marker, not just for Gabriel's future, but for how far a surrogacy contract can reach when a child's life hangs in the balance.

Several questions remain unanswered. The commissioning parents have not publicly responded to West's Supreme Court filing. Gabriel's current medical status is unclear. And no ruling from Justice Kagan or the full court had been announced as of the filing.

When a contract says one thing and a baby's heartbeat says another, the law ought to side with the child who cannot speak for himself.