In August 2025, McKenna West, a single mother from Alaska, agreed to carry a pregnancy on behalf of a couple from California. A year on, West and the child are in Texas, and the resulting multistate legal dispute has drawn media coverage from across the country. The case exposes the messiness of surrogacy arrangements in the United States and how the nation’s abortion wars are poisoning dialogue about infertility treatment.
The relationship between West and the intended parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, fell apart after West learned that the child she was carrying had a rare congenital condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome. The surrogacy agreement, signed by all three, stipulated that in case of a fetal abnormality, Gilkar and Omar could request that West terminate the pregnancy. West alleges that Gilkar and Ahmed pressured her to end the pregnancy; Gilkar and Ahmed say that all three had previously agreed that abortion was the best option before West changed her mind.
The relationship between West and the intended parents, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, fell apart after West learned that the child she was carrying had a rare congenital condition.
In either case, West then sought help from a national anti-abortion organization, Live Action, that covered the costs of her travel to Texas. There, Ken Paxton, Texas attorney general and GOP candidate for Senate, notified area hospitals of their obligations to provide life-saving care if West delivered the child. The Alliance Defending Freedom, the group responsible for the Dobbs case that brought down Roe v. Wade, is representing West in her pursuit of custody.
West’s case is just one of a series of surrogacy stories to make headlines in recent years. A Chinese tech billionaire claims to have had U.S. surrogates bear him more than 100 American-born children. Last year, police in Arcadia, California, raided the home of a couple who had immigrated from China; local authorities took custody of 21 children, most of them born as a result of surrogacy, and put them in foster care.
Although these cases differ in many ways, they all show how vague and complicated the law of surrogacy is in the U.S. State law on the subject varies, and there is no comprehensive federal law protecting surrogacy, regulating it or addressing its costs. (Surrogacy can cost intended parents more than $100,000, or even $200,000.) Is access to surrogacy a necessary component of reproductive liberty for some patients dealing with fertility? Or does surrogacy (at least commercial surrogacy) inevitably compromise the liberty of the person carrying the pregnancy?
One aspect of the latter question is particularly relevant to West’s case: whether surrogacy contracts force the surrogate into unwanted reproductive decisions. Termination clauses aren’t uncommon, and are supposed to give intended parents some control over when a surrogate can end a pregnancy. They may allow abortion only under certain circumstances, such as in cases of threats to the surrogate’s health, or require it under others, like the discovery of certain congenital health conditions. Gilkar and Ahmed are now reportedly seeking damages from West for breaching the contract and causing them emotional distress. West, by contrast, claims that the contract is void because it is coercive and violates her rights to privacy and bodily autonomy.
Because many surrogacy contracts carry confidentiality provisions, it is difficult to get data on how common fights like this are — or how they are resolved. Most experts agree that no judge would have ordered West to have an abortion against her will, but it’s possible that a court would allow intended parents to stop the payments due under a contract or even seek monetary damages. Does that make this kind of provision coercive or a violation of reproductive autonomy? Or does there need to be some kind of contractual protection for intended parents, who have their own interest in reproductive autonomy?
The answers to those questions could affect who will ultimately win custody in this case. Surrogacy law varies considerably from state to state, but courts will often apply the law of the location where a surrogate gives birth. That’s partly why West fled to Texas: She thinks the law there is the most favorable to her cause. A California court granted custody to Gilkar and Ahmed, and a Texas court has recognized that decision for now. But the case continues, with the next hearing scheduled for next week.
Surrogacy law varies considerably from state to state, but courts will often apply the law of the location where a surrogate gives birth. That’s partly why West fled to Texas.
Like most states, Texas law will enforce surrogacy agreements if they meet certain requirements, and these agreements award parental rights to the intended parents. But West argues that Texas courts should throw out her contract because of its coercive dimensions. With the contract out of the way, she then claims that Texas law should recognize the birth mother — in this case, herself — as the legal parent.
Not surprisingly, debate about surrogacy in the U.S. has been hijacked by the nation’s abortion wars. Republicans who seized on West’s story did so with an eye to securing rights for embryos. After the Alabama Supreme Court decided in 2024 that embryos intended for in vitro fertilization qualified as children for the purpose of the state’s death-of-a-minor act, conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and ADF have taken aim at IVF, arguing that storing or disposing of IVF embryos violates the rights of the unborn.
So far, IVF access remains mostly unchanged, and a series of high-profile scandals has put surrogacy in the crosshairs instead. And abortion opponents oppose surrogacy because it doesn’t treat embryos as rights-holding persons. A ban on commercial surrogacy would lay groundwork for restrictions on IVF.
Surrogacy is complicated, and it raises questions about infertility care and its cost, the nature of reproductive liberty and the meaning of parenthood. Instead of a serious debate about how to resolve these questions, West’s case shows that policymakers instead exploit a vacuum in infertility law to restrict or outlaw IVF, surrogacy and even abortion. McKenna West’s case may be complicated, but the aims of those helping her are not. Conservatives’ fixation on abortion means that even the most complex cases are quickly boiled down to an excuse to further limit reproductive options.
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