DALLAS (AP) — A California couple in an escalating fight with their surrogate over a newborn with a life-threatening heart defect told a Texas court Tuesday that the child’s condition has worsened and they are anguished by attempts to deny them parental rights because they previously wanted an abortion.“He’s our child,” Nausheen Gilkar said, wiping away tears on the witness stand. “She’s unstable,” Gilkar said of surrogate McKenna West, who was sitting across from her in the Dallas courtroom. “She’s trying to take him from us.” The hearing offered the fullest public airing to date of a deepening and high-profile dispute over surrogacy and abortion that has rushed right-to-life groups and GOP officeholders to the side of West, a nurse who flew from Alaska to have the baby on Aug. 12 in Texas, where most abortions are banned.
McKenna West, left, arrivers with her legal team for a court hearing in Dallas, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
Gilkar and her husband, Omar Ahmed, say they named the newborn Rumi. Attorneys for West, who has called the child Gabriel, said she is seeking sole conservatorship to make medical decisions for the child.
It was not clear when the judge would issue an order in the case. West told the court that she was 23 weeks pregnant when she made an appointment for an abortion at the couple’s urging but was not comfortable with it.
