A surrogate mother who fled to Texas rather than abort a baby with a treatable heart condition has filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court, racing to block a California custody order before the infant can be moved out of state.

McKenna West, an Alaska nurse who carried the child for a California couple, asked the high court on Wednesday to temporarily halt a Los Angeles court ruling that declared biological parents Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar the legal parents of the boy she delivered on Aug. 12 in Dallas. The baby, whom West named Gabriel, was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a severe but survivable defect that doctors said requires three staged surgeries. He has already undergone the first, Fox News reported, with more anticipated.

West's filing warns that without Supreme Court intervention, the child could be transferred to California as soon as Sept. 17 and placed in hospice care rather than receive the remaining operations. Her attorneys argue the California court lacked jurisdiction over a child born in Texas and that the ruling should be treated as void.

West fled three states to protect a child she was told to abort

The dispute began during pregnancy, when doctors diagnosed the unborn child with hypoplastic left heart syndrome at roughly 20 weeks. Ahmed and Gilkar asked West to terminate. She refused. Breitbart reported that the biological parents invoked what West's legal team described as an "abortion on demand" clause in the surrogacy contract and threatened her with more than $250,000 in financial penalties if she did not comply.

West described the alternative in blunt terms. She said she was appalled by the prospect of doctors injecting the baby with "a solution that will stop his heart and then he'll be literally ripped apart and dismembered as he's taken from [her] uterus," when his condition is treatable.

Rather than submit, West traveled to Texas to deliver at a hospital that specializes in the care Gabriel would need. The hospital where the baby was born reportedly carries a 100 percent success rate for the Norwood procedure, the first of the three heart surgeries doctors recommended as standard treatment for the condition, the New York Post reported.

West's attorney, Lincoln Wilson, framed the legal theory plainly: "She is seeking parentage of the child because she gave birth in Texas, and in Texas, if you give birth to a child, it's your child."

Texas intervened to save the baby, then reversed course

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped into the case early. His office demanded protection for the surrogate and argued the child should receive medically necessary treatment. A Dallas court responded with a sweeping order: life-saving care was to be provided upon Gabriel's birth, a guardian was appointed, and no one could remove the child from Texas while the case was pending.

Paxton put the stakes in direct terms. "Baby Gabriel deserves a chance at life, and I will not allow anyone to unlawfully deny him medically necessary care," Just The News reported him saying.

But the protections did not hold. On Sept. 1, the Texas court recognized the California judgment establishing Ahmed and Gilkar as the infant's legal parents and dismissed West from the case with prejudice. That single ruling stripped West of any right to receive information about the child's medical status or participate in decisions about his care.

The Supreme Court has been active on emergency applications in recent months, weighing in on disputes that range from executive-power questions to contested election procedures. West's filing, docketed as No. 26A325, was directed to Justice Elena Kagan.

California's custody order could send Gabriel to hospice instead of surgery

West's attorneys laid out the consequences of inaction in the emergency application. "Unless this Court provides relief from that judgment, M.W. will have no access to information about Baby G.'s condition," the filing states. It adds that "relief later in Texas proceedings may only restore her right to protect a child that has already passed."

The fear is specific. The Hill reported that West believes the biological parents may move Gabriel to California and place him in hospice care rather than proceed with the remaining surgeries. The child's doctors recommended three after-birth operations as the standard course of treatment. Gabriel has had one. Without the next two, his prognosis is grim.

National Review noted that Texas Attorney General Paxton's office had previously alleged the intended parents refused consent for life-saving procedures and may have planned to transport the baby to California specifically to prevent the surgeries from happening. The Dallas court's original order, the one overridden on Sept. 1, had explicitly barred anyone from "withholding or obstructing necessary treatment or removing, discharging, or transferring the child."

Gilkar previously told a Texas court that she and Ahmed considered abortion after learning of the diagnosis but later decided to continue the pregnancy. That statement complicates the couple's position: if they chose to continue the pregnancy, the question becomes why they would then resist the surgeries doctors say the child needs to survive.

Surrogacy law left a woman with no standing and a baby with no advocate

The case exposes a gap in American surrogacy law that few legislators have addressed. West carried the child, delivered him, and sought medical care for him. Under Texas law, a woman who gives birth is the legal mother. But the California court applied a different framework, one rooted in the surrogacy contract and the biological parents' genetic connection, and Texas ultimately deferred to it.

The result is a situation where a surrogate who acted to save a child's life has been shut out of the legal process entirely. She cannot visit. She cannot ask about his condition. She cannot object if the biological parents decline further surgery. The Sept. 1 dismissal with prejudice means she has no remaining avenue in the Texas courts.

Wilson, West's attorney, said the fight was always headed to the highest court. "We are taking that challenge up through the California courts, and we'll take it up to the US Supreme Court if we have to," he told reporters. They did. The Supreme Court's recent willingness to intervene in contested cases may give West's team reason to hope for at least a temporary stay.

West herself has been direct about her motives from the start. "Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying, including me," she said. "Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life."

The court has not yet acted on the emergency application. The Sept. 17 date West's attorneys cited as the earliest the child could be moved to California is five days away. The case also raises broader questions the justices have not yet confronted: whether a state court can assert custody over a child born in another state, and whether a surrogacy contract can override a birth mother's standing to advocate for a child's medical care. Those are questions that a closely divided court may not be eager to take up on an emergency timeline.

But the clock is not waiting for the justices to get comfortable. A four-week-old boy who has already survived open-heart surgery needs two more operations. The woman who carried him and fought to give him a chance at life has been told she has no legal right to make sure he gets them. If the Supreme Court declines to act, the only people with authority over Gabriel's care are the same ones who once asked that he never be born.

A legal system that strips a child's strongest advocate of standing while handing life-and-death authority to the people who wanted to end that life is not protecting anyone, least of all the child.