{"id":444572,"date":"2026-09-23T00:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/444572\/"},"modified":"2026-09-23T00:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T00:16:10","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-surrogates-bid-for-custody-of-baby-born-with-serious-heart-defect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/444572\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court rejects surrogate’s bid for custody of baby born with serious heart defect"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to intervene<\/a> in a custody dispute over a baby boy<\/a> who was born with a serious heart defect after a surrogate said she refused a couple’s abortion request<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Justice Elena Kagan denied McKenna West’s emergency conservatorship request<\/a> for the 5-week-old infant. <\/p>\n

West had asked the court to stop a California court order recognizing the intended parents, Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar, as the child’s legal parents. West calls the baby Gabriel, while the couple calls him Rumi.<\/p>\n

The dispute began after the fetus was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening condition that impedes normal blood flow. <\/p>\n

West said the couple urged her to have an abortion<\/a> at 23 weeks. She said she refused, then traveled from Alaska to Texas, where most abortions are banned, to give birth.<\/p>\n

West sought custody or conservatorship, saying she feared Ahmed and Gilkar would withhold life-saving medical care. The couple denied that claim and told the justices that intervention would disrupt medical decision-making during a critical period.<\/p>\n

The baby underwent surgery shortly after birth and may require additional procedures or a heart transplant. Without treatment, children with the condition can die within days or weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n

Courts in California, Alaska, and Texas have previously recognized Ahmed and Gilkar as the child\u2019s parents. The Texas Supreme Court also recently allowed them to move the infant to Los Angeles for specialized treatment. <\/p>\n

_____________<\/p>\n

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Associated Press contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (TNND) \u2014 The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to intervene in a custody dispute over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-444572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}