McKenna West, center, comes out of a courtroom with her legal team after a hearing regarding her baby surrogacy case on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in Dallas.
Chitose Suzuki/The Dallas Morning News
Well before McKenna West traveled to Texas to give birth, stirring a multistate legal fight over surrogacy, the practice had become increasingly common in the state.
The annual number of surrogate births in Texas has more than doubled over the past decade, according to data from the Department of State Health Services. In 2025, there were more than 650 surrogate births in the state.
In the last few years, Texas has become one of top destinations for surrogacy across the nation because of what experts describe as a surrogate-friendly medical and legal environment. But though its circumstances are rare, West’s case could ultimately give people pause before pursuing surrogacy in Texas, depending on how it evolves, experts say.
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West, who is from Alaska, was about 20 weeks into carrying a fetus for a California couple when doctors diagnosed him with a severe congenital heart condition, hypoplastic left heart syndrome.
The baby would need multiple open heart surgeries to survive after birth, and the intended parents originally chose to terminate the pregnancy — allowed by the surrogacy contract between the parties. West refused and came to Texas in mid-July. She gave birth to the baby, Rumi, in mid-August. He underwent the first stage of necessary surgery Aug. 17.
At a Tuesday Dallas County court hearing, District Judge Ashley Wysocki temporarily extended an order preventing West from seeing or making medical decisions for the baby, though her final ruling is pending.
Read more: Biological mother and surrogate testify at Dallas County court hearing
Surrogacy state
In 2022 — the latest year for which data is available — Texas clinics performed about 700 embryonic transfers involving a gestational surrogacy, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Across the country, only California clinics performed more, at about 3,600.
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Parham Zar, Founder and Managing Director of Egg Donor & Surrogacy Institute, said Texas’ relatively long history of surrogacy has made the state’s medical and legal systems well accustomed to the process. Zar’s agency has facilitated about 2,000 surrogacies with intended parents and surrogates across the U.S.
“They have proper safeguards for the surrogate and the intended parents rather than fear-based safeguards,” Zar said. “Then it becomes a better experience for both the surrogate and the intended parents.”
Texas first set up an explicit legal framework for surrogacy in 2003. Across the country, laws around the practice vary. New York prohibited surrogacy until 2021.
With two decades of legal surrogacy, Texas’ doctors have gained more experience performing the fertilization and implantation procedures necessary for surrogacy. The state also has a more experienced population of surrogates, Zar said, who are more familiar with what the process entails.
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While Texas’ surrogacy law is rooted in statute (laws passed by a legislature), many states rely solely on case law built through individual court cases. The higher degree of legal certainty in Texas has also contributed to the state’s more surrogacy-friendly atmosphere, said Texas A&M School of Law professor Malinda Seymore, who specializes in family law.
In Texas, legal recognition that a child belongs to the intended parents before a surrogate gives birth is easier to obtain because of clear statutes. Courts generally grant married couples that pre-birth recognition, though it is sometimes harder to obtain for same-sex couples or would-be single parents — depending on the location. Other states, however, might only have post-birth parentage orders available.
In planning for surrogacy, these gaps in assurance matter.
“It certainly makes it difficult for you to know it will work out in your favor before you do something permanent, like implanting one of your embryos in another person,” Seymore said.
Contested contracts
How courts rule on the enforceability of West’s contract could inject uncertainty into surrogacy arrangements, experts say.
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West is seeking a claim to parentage of the baby. In Seymore’s view, that’s an unlikely outcome that would require more litigation. Until the cases are decided, though, intending parents are not likely to welcome uncertainty over their child’s medical decisions.
While no court could have forced West to terminate the pregnancy, there are often financial penalties attached to contractual abortion clauses. The intended parents in West’s case countersued her for $100,000, but litigation in multiple states, including Texas, has yet to determine which parts of the contract can be enforced.
Read more: What court documents reveal about surrogacy controversy
“There’s a whole infrastructure, an entire industry, that tries very hard to ensure that people are on the same page before anyone is pregnant or there is a relationship formed,” said UT Austin School of Law professor Rachel Rebouché, who specializes in reproductive law.
If a court rules that parts of the contract should be struck down because of public policy considerations, that could affect how parties make surrogacy contracts in the future.
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“Future parties are going to want to avoid courts coming to that conclusion about their agreements,” Rebouché said.
Even before this case, changes to Texas abortion laws led to shifts in agreements, said Jenny Womack, a Dallas area lawyer who has worked on surrogacy cases for 25 years, and is not involved in the West case.
Previously, contracts could allow parents to ask that surrogates terminate their pregnancy in certain instances based on a fetus’s condition. Texas’ 2022 abortion ban changed that.
Now, some attorneys in other states advise intended parents to not choose a surrogate in Texas, Womack said. Some of her clients have also asked why new contracts cut out abortion clauses they previously contained. Most of them continue with the process here, since having to terminate or selectively reduce a surrogate pregnancy is rare.
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The political implications of this case aren’t lost on Womack, who predicted the Republican Party might use it as justification to restrict surrogacy. While she said this case by itself probably won’t sway more people to oppose the practice, it could play into a broader Texas GOP push — added to the party platform earlier in the summer — to restrict surrogacy.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next legislature,” Womack said.