© 2026 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved.
Justice Elena Kagan issues STUNNING decision in surrogacy case where parents wanted to abort child with heart defect
L-R: Corbis News/Getty Images; Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images

Justice Elena Kagan issues STUNNING decision in surrogacy case where parents wanted to abort child with heart defect

The baby was born with a life-threatening heart condition.

Another turn in the bizarre case that is dividing America came out of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday.

An Alaska woman serving as a surrogate fled to Texas in order to allow the baby she was carrying to be delivered after the biological parents asked her to abort the child over a rare and serious heart defect.

'Those efforts have been rejected by every single court.'

Justice Elena Kagan rejected a request for an emergency appeal from McKenna West, the woman who is trying to wrest custody from the boy's biological parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar. Kagan presides over emergency appeals from California and nearby states.

West was asking the Supreme Court to block an order from a California court that found the couple to be the child's legal parents.

Court filings say that the surrogacy contract allowed Ahmed and Gilkar to request an abortion if the child carried by West was diagnosed with a fetal abnormality, CBS News reported.

The couple requested that option after an anatomy scan after 20 weeks found the baby to have hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening condition.

West refused and fled to Texas, where the baby was born in August. She has named him Gabriel, while the couple has named him Rumi.

The California court found the couple to be the child's legal parents before he was born. A Texas court found that the couple is responsible for the child's health decision, not the surrogate.

West wants to be declared the baby's mother and argued that recognizing the couple as the boy's legal parents may jeopardize his health and safety. In her filing, she claimed the couple may interfere with his ongoing treatment.

Attorneys for the couple said in a Supreme Court filing that they will provide lifesaving care to the child and are "committed to doing so for the rest of his life."

"Respondents have been with their child around the clock in a hospital's pediatric intensive care unit," the attorneys wrote. "The child has been receiving critical medical care by his team of doctors at the consent and direction of Respondents."

RELATED: Paxton intervenes to help save surrogate baby from abortion

Adam Wolf, an attorney for the couple, released a statement after Kagan refused West's appeal.

"We are truly grateful that Rumi can continue receiving the treatment he needs to survive and that he will not be stripped away from what has been described by doctors as the excellent care of his parents," he wrote, according to CBS News.

"Ms. West's legal filings across three jurisdictions, state courts of appeals, and now the U.S. Supreme Court have sought to undermine Rumi's parents' right to provide him with the care he needs. Those efforts have been rejected by every single court."

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Want to leave a tip?

We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today.
Carlos Garcia

Carlos Garcia

Staff Writer

Carlos Garcia is a staff writer for Blaze News.