Biological parents have secured restraining order against surrogate as lawsuit continues and baby receives care
The baby with a rare life-threatening heart defect at the center of a legal battle between his biological parents and the surrogate who carried him is in critical condition, court documents show, as the escalating custody case continues.
“He’s our child,” the baby’s biological mother Nausheen Gilkar told the court on Tuesday, 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.”
As they claimed the baby’s condition had worsened, Gilkar and the baby’s biological father, Omar Ahmed, said they were anguished by attempts to deny them parental rights because they previously had wanted an abortion.
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 12 August in Texas, where most abortions are banned.
