Michigan healthcare freedom community forum
Our immediate Canadian neighbors continue to plumb new moral chasms in health care:
https://nationalpost.com/news/couple-sues-ontario-surrogate-mother-who-refused-to-abort-fetus
Couple sues Ontario surrogate mother who refused to abort fetus
The surrogate said the fetus had a cleft lip and possible genetic abnormalities, but the couple changed tack as it emerged that the birth defect was relatively minorA Canadian couple is suing the surrogate mother who carried their son, two years after she refused their request to abort the fetus because of a cleft lip and possible genetic abnormalities.
The Ontario-based surrogate insisted that more tests be conducted and eventually the same-sex couple agreed to let the pregnancy continue, as specialists indicated he was a healthy child with a relatively minor birth defect.
But in a suit filed in Ontario Superior Court this May, the parents allege the woman failed to keep them informed about the health of the baby, put the child at risk, caused them emotional distress and violated their confidentiality, all charges the surrogate denies vehemently.
The statement of claim does not specifically mention their request in June 2024 to terminate the pregnancy at 22 weeks. But both the surrogate and the head of the agency that brought them together say the relationship started to sour after the abortion disagreement.
“That’s when everything changed … they wanted a termination,” said Sally Rhoads-Heinrich, owner of Surrogacy in Canada Online and a pioneer in the field.
The National Post is naming neither the surrogate nor the parents of the young child to protect their privacy, but has viewed the parents’ statement of claim, and the letter requesting the abortion.
Jonathan Lancaster, a Toronto-based lawyer for the couple, said he and his clients were declining to comment.
Tension between the parents and surrogate appears to have been exacerbated after the woman insisted on going ahead with a home birth, and later filed a small-claims suit asking the parents to reimburse out-of-pocket expenses. The expenses dispute has gone to arbitration, but in the meantime the couple served the single mother, a corrections officer, with a full-blown civil suit, handled by Faskens, a powerful Bay Street law firm.
Though the suit does not claim a specific amount of damages, she says the plaintiffs have indicated they’re seeking about $600,000.
“You know I’m a single mom, you know I have a daughter, and you’re basically suing me for my house. It seems very s—ty, it’s just awful,” the resident of Ontario’s Muskoka region said in an interview. “I just feel used … They didn’t get the perfect child they wanted and they threw me away.”
For Rhoads-Heinrich, the unusual sequence of events highlights the vulnerable position of Canadian surrogates, who are in high demand but are legally barred from charging commercial fees – unlike counterparts in the U.S. and some other countries. They can only be reimbursed for receipted expenses. Most get pregnant simply to help others but sometimes fail to get their costs paid or are literally left holding the baby when the parents walk away, she said.
“What I find most difficult in this is they are suing the woman who brought their son to them,” said Rhoads-Heinrich. “How is their son going to feel some day if he learns that?”
Complete bans or restrictions on surrogacy in places like Thailand and India have made Canada – where the surrogate’s health-care costs are covered by medicare – a popular destination for would-be parents, she said.
About 100 families are looking for a surrogate here for every one woman willing to provide the service, she estimates.
“The whole world is coming to Canada,” said Rhoads-Heinrich.
She argues surrogates should be able to charge fees – even if it’s a modest amount that’s proscribed by regulation – to ensure they’re fairly treated.
The federal Assisted Reproduction Act is designed in part to protect surrogates and egg donors by making it illegal to commercialize the human-procreation process, noted Juliet Guichon, a bioethics professor at the University of Calgary. But she said the Ontario surrogate’s case underscores that women who give birth for others, sometimes risking their lives, are still vulnerable, noting that the parents appear to be to punishing the woman for allegedly contravening their agreement.
“Moreover, they earlier sought to end the fetus’s life for a medical condition that … can be completely overcome by surgery and therapy,” Guichon added. Based on what she knows about the case, she says, “The question arises as to whether it is in the best interests of the child to be raised by these people.”
The Ontario woman says she became interested in surrogacy after seeing two close friends face barriers getting pregnant. “I work in an awful place. I see the worst humans in the world and it was like something positive.”
After her profile went up on Surrogacy in Canada Online’s website, she said she almost immediately heard from 50 families wanting her services, some of them even sending flowers to her home. Her extensive screening process narrowed the group down until she eventually settled on the same-sex couple and underwent in-vitro fertilization with embryos from a donor egg and each of their sperm.
Their rapport was positive for the first months of the pregnancy, the woman says, but then in late June of 2024 she told them about an ultrasound that indicated the baby had a cleft lip, possibly a cleft palate and a minor heart defect. The surrogate officiates at high-level international wrestling competitions and was in the Dominican Republic for a tournament soon afterward when she received a legalistically worded letter from the “intended parents.”
“Considering that medical tests indicate that the fetus has, or is likely to have, a genetic, chromosomal or other abnormality or defect, and in accordance with article 8.5 (a) of our surrogacy agreement … we want to inform you of our wish that the pregnancy be terminated,” it said. “Although very difficult, this decision is free and informed.”
Away from home in a developing country and lacking in-person supports, the surrogate said she was “devastated” and a “mess” after receiving the unexpected request.
She said she would have agreed to an abortion if the baby had no chance of survival after birth, but was not comfortable terminating a 22-week fetus with what she considered a largely cosmetic defect. She says the parents came to Toronto, where doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital – which specializes in obstetric care – said the baby had no problems beyond the cleft lip and was generally healthy. The parents agreed to go ahead.
Surrogacy consultant Sally Rhoads-Heinrich: “What I find most difficult in this is they are suing the woman who brought their son to them. How is their son going to feel some day if he learns that?”
Canadian law is clear that a pregnant woman has the final say over whether she has an abortion or not, regardless of what others, including a fellow parent, may tell her to do, said Guichon.
More conflict arose when the mother insisted on keeping to the original plan to have the baby delivered in a private home by midwives, not in a hospital as the parents requested because of the cleft lip. The baby had breathing problems on delivery but soon recovered when the midwives administered oxygen, and called an ambulance to take him to hospital, she says.
The parents took the baby home and for the most part cut off communication with the surrogate, she says. She eventually asked them to reimburse her for about $10,000 in outstanding expenses, including lost income from work during the pregnancy, contributions to her pension plan she missed and transportation costs.
When she heard nothing back after repeated requests, she went to small-claims court, only to learn that their contract required such disagreements to be resolved by arbitration. Then came the parents’ own lawsuit, which raised a number of other issues.
It alleges partly that the surrogate failed to keep them abreast of the fetus’s health, put the baby’s health at risk by negligent behaviour and “failing to follow the (parents’) direction regarding decisions affecting the fetus’s medical care.”
The suit also charges she violated their confidentiality and caused serious emotional distress, with one of the parents unable to work from July 2, 2024 – when the woman said she would not have an abortion – until September 2025.
She said in the interview that she was in fact scrupulous about keeping the parents informed on the fetus’s health, never did anything to endanger the unborn child and kept the couple’s identities out of any outside communication about the pregnancy.
You just knew that this moral depravity was going to happen in the States, in California no less, didn't you:
https://nypost.com/2026/08/01/us-news/surrogate-fights-biological-parents-to-save-baby-lawsuit/
Surrogate fighting for baby’s life against abortion-pushing biological parents: ‘Every life matters’
By David Spector - August 1, 2026A surrogate mother is fighting tooth and nail to save the life of the baby she’s carrying amid relentless pressure from his biological parents, who pushed to abort him after he was diagnosed with a heart condition, a lawsuit claims.
McKenna West, an Alaskan nurse and single mom of two, signed on to become a surrogate with Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists in September 2025 to make ends meet.
When she underwent an anatomy scan in her 20th week of pregnancy in April 2026, “Baby Gabriel” was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS) — a severe but treatable heart condition, per the lawsuit.
Baby Gabriel’s biological parents, referred to in court papers only as A.B. and C.D., demanded West abort the baby, in accordance with the “abortion on demand” clause of their surrogacy agreement, according to court docs.
Doctors in Alaska refused to perform the abortion — a two-day-long, highly intensive and risky late-term procedure, so the biological parents demanded West travel to Seattle, per court documents.
West, already bonded with the unborn child, was grief-stricken at the prospect.
She was appalled at the idea that doctors would inject Baby Gabriel with “a solution that will stop his heart and then he’ll be literally ripped apart and dismembered as he’s taken from [her] uterus,” when his condition is treatable, according to the suit.
“Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me… Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life,” West told The Post in a statement.
Newborns diagnosed with HLHS require surgery almost immediately after birth in order to survive past their first week. Babies who are operated on have a 75% chance of making it to 5 years old, and those who make it to their first birthday have have a 90% chance of making it to 18, according to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
The Alaskan nurse decided she couldn’t go through with the abortion and offered to take full responsibility for Baby Gabriel, absolving the biological parents of all financial and custodial responsibilities.
Her offer was rejected, and they threatened to sue her for $250,000, a sum that would bankrupt her, the lawsuit claimed.
She fled to Texas in the hope of giving birth at a hospital that specializes in pediatric cardiac cases.
A complex legal battle proceeded in both Alaska Superior Court and the California Second District Court of Appeal, as the biological parents now attempt to compel West to give birth in their home state of California. They are also fighting to attain parental rights over Baby Gabriel, who is due on Sept. 3.
However, West suspects that this is a ploy by the biological parents to terminate Baby Gabriel by refusing to have doctors perform the life-saving surgery on him.
West has offered to renounce any parental rights over Baby Gabriel as long as the biological parents vow to get him the surgery, and they have refused. They have also discussed palliative care for the child with doctors, according to court documents.
However, A.B. and C.D. contend that West is distorting reality and is only after their money, court documents say.
“Unfortunately, there is no way to know if their child will be eligible for the surgeries he needs because West refuses to submit to an amniocentesis [a prenatal test that checks for genetic disorders] because she is afraid she will not get paid for it,” the complaint read.
Texas court orders life saving measures for surrogate McKenna West's unborn child:
Surrogate McKenna West who refuses to abort baby despite its biological parents wishes scores early legal victory
By Chris Bradford - August 12, 2026A surrogate who refuses to abort her unborn baby despite the wishes of his biological parents has scored an early legal victory in the case – just weeks before her due date.
McKenna West, an Alaskan nurse, is set to give birth to the fetus she has named Gabriel on Sept. 2 but during her pregnancy, he was diagnosed with the severe but treatable heart condition hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS).
His parents Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, from California, called on West to seek an abortion – but she has traveled to Texas where she will be recognized as the birth mother under state law.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition that urges doctors to give Gabriel “life-saving” care when he is born and stop him from being taken out of the state.
A court granted the petition Tuesday and it states, “Upon the child’s live birth, medically indicated stabilizing and life-sustaining care shall be provided to the child pending further order of this Court.
“No person shall withhold, direct the withholding of, obstruct, or delay that care.
“Upon the child’s live birth and pending further order of this Court, no person shall: remove the child from the [hospital where he’s treated], [and] remove the child from the state of Texas.”
Lawyers for Gilker and Ahmed have not commented on West’s legal victory.
“The court has made the right decision in immediately acting to protect baby Gabriel’s life and ensure he receives the care he deserves,” Paxton said following the judge’s order.
“My office utilized every tool at our disposal to protect life, and we will not back down in continuing to support baby Gabriel’s well-being.
“Every child in our state deserves to be cared for and protected, and that’s exactly what I’ll fight for.”
Newborns diagnosed with HLHS require surgery almost immediately after birth in order to survive past their first week.
Babies who are operated on have a 75% chance of making it to 5 years old, and those who make it to their first birthday have a 90% chance of making it to 18, according to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
West’s fetus was diagnosed with the condition in April, and it was a diagnosis that came out of the blue.
“I was 20 weeks,” she told Live Action News. “[The baby’s parents] were on a FaceTime call after the ultrasound.
“The doctor came in and told us there was something really wrong with the baby’s heart.
“There was no blood flow through the left side of the heart.
She said she wasn’t qualified to give a diagnosis, and I needed to be referred to an MFM [maternal-fetal medicine doctor] for another ultrasound.
“So we were all really upset. It was completely unexpected. Everything had been going great. There had been no signs of anything being wrong. All genetic testing was normal.”
But there was a clause in the surrogacy contract that allowed terminations if there was an “anomaly” during the pregnancy – and feared the baby’s biological parents would proceed with the abortion.
“I was feeling pretty confident that they were going to choose termination, and how could I possibly live with myself going through that?” she said.
West, a single mom of two, refused to have an abortion in Alaska and is being sued by Gilkar and Ahmed.
They want her to get the termination in their home state of California.
But West is only willing to go to California if the baby’s biological parents will allow him to get treatment, according to the lawsuit seen by Live Action News.
Ahmed and Gilkar are set to appear in a Dallas County court on Aug. 25.
Surrogate McKenna West delivered her child today:
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/article/surrogacy-mckenna-west-birth-22385469.php
Baby at center of multistate surrogacy controversy born in North Texas
McKenna West, a surrogate, gave birth on Wednesday. An attorney for the parents said the baby boy's health condition has been turned into "political theater."
By Emily Brindley - August 12, 2026McKenna West, a surrogate from Alaska, has given birth to the baby who’s been at the center of a multistate controversy over parental rights and abortion.
West gave birth Wednesday morning in the Dallas area, attorney Lincoln Wilson told The Dallas Morning News. West’s legal team has referred to the baby as “Baby Gabriel”
An attorney for the intended parents, Lee Budner, confirmed in a written statement to The News that the baby was born Wednesday morning and is currently undergoing medical care.
“Our clients’ only focus at this time is ensuring that their baby receives the medical care that he vitally needs and that they, as his parents, are able to spend every precious moment they can with him,” Budner wrote.
The baby has been part of a controversy that’s made national headlines.
West was carrying the baby under a surrogacy contract that she signed with a California couple.
The surrogacy contract, according to Wilson and a recorded interview that West participated in for The Megyn Kelly Show, allowed the intended parents to choose to terminate the pregnancy in the case of fetal anomalies.
When West was about 20 weeks pregnant, the fetus she was carrying was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is a severe congenital heart condition. The intended parents then decided they wanted to terminate the pregnancy.
West, however, refused to undergo an abortion. She later traveled to Texas, seeking a hospital with expertise in caring for infants with this congenital condition.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has waded into the legal case in Dallas County court. Paxton’s office announced that it obtained an emergency court order requiring two Dallas hospitals — UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas — to provide life-saving care to the baby.
The baby will require intensive treatment and surgery to survive. If he does eventually leave the hospital, Wilson said it’s not clear what will happen to him.
While Wilson acknowledged that the intended parents have said they are the biological parents of the child, the attorney added that his legal team hasn’t received a genetic test confirming that. West, according to the attorney, would consider taking the baby if the courts permit. As of right now, however, the surrogate is not allowed to see or hold the baby under a court order.
Budner, in his statement on behalf of the intended parents, described the couple unequivocally as the baby’s parents.
“Our clients will continue, as they always have, to place their baby’s health and well-being first,” Budner wrote, “following the advice of the baby’s medical team, just as any loving parent would.”
Budner wrote that it’s been devastating for the intended parents to see the baby’s health condition “transformed into political theater” by West and the Texas attorney general.
West’s legal team includes counsel from the law firm First and Fourteenth and the conservative nonprofit group Alliance Defending Freedom. Wilson said the legal team believes the pregnancy termination clause in West’s surrogacy contract, while standard, is “offensive to state and federal law.”
“The law doesn’t permit hit man contracts,” Wilson said, “and this is a hit man contract.”
Well, praise the Lord for this little one's safe delivery, and for his brave Mom.
I hope he makes it - and that his erstwhile killers turn out to be as "loving" as their lawyers claim.
A brief legal analysis of an important surrogacy contract question from Josh Blackman of The Volokh Conspiracy. Are surrogacy contracts peonage contracts?
https://reason.com/volokh/2026/08/13/surrogacy-contracts-abortion-and-peonage/
Surrogacy Contracts, Abortion, and Peonage
Some questions for liberals and conservative to think about.
By Josh Blackman | August 13, 2026A tragic case in Texas has given me an opportunity to rethink the relationship between surrogacy contracts, abortion, and peonage.
In short, a couple from California signed a surrogacy contract with a woman from Alaska. A fertilized embryo was implanted in the Alaska woman. At the 20-week mark, the child was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease that would require multiple surgeries to survive. Pursuant to the surrogacy contract, the couple ordered the woman carrying their child to terminate the pregnancy. The woman refused and she traveled to Texas where the abortion would have been illegal. The Texas Attorney General intervened, and sought a TRO to ensure the child would receive medical care. The child has now been born. The couple from California gave him one name and the woman from Alaska gave him another name. Now there will be a contest for custody. Presumably this dispute will be adjudicated by the Texas courts. All the while, the baby will face weeks of risky surgeries.
We should all pray for the baby on many fronts. He faces extremely dangerous procedures ahead of him. But what comes after the surgery will be a challenging life for this newborn. Who will his parents be? Pro-choice advocates often argue that abortion is favored to prevent the biological parents from suffering the grief of losing a child in-utero or shortly after birth. It is better, advocates argue, to terminate the pregnancy earlier on to limit the pain the parents will feel as attachment grows. In this case, the California couple couldn't terminate the pregnancy because another person was carrying their child. So we have the rare counterfactual where the couple made the choice to terminate the pregnancy, but the child was carried to term. The biological parents are now facing a very different type of grief, one that will likely endure during the child's life and beyond. And should the child survive, he will one day face a realization that his biological parents would have preferred him to be dead.
Beyond the moral issue, there is a constitutional question presented. The surrogacy contract the woman from Alaska signed arguably requires her to undergo an abortion if the California couple demanded it. She told Megyn Kelly she felt "trapped" by the surrogacy contract.
In any other context, a contract that forces a woman to undergo a surgical procedure against her will would be void against public policy. But the entire nature of surrogacy treats the woman's body as a commodity that can be controlled.
There is a common refrain that bans on abortion violate the Thirteenth Amendment. I think these arguments are risible. The state has an absolute compelling interest to preserve life, and to prevent the destruction of life. Moreover, laws banning abortion were adopted contemporaneously with the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments. And even the least restrictive means to preserve the life is to ban the abortion.
The surrogacy contracts resemble another vestige from Reconstruction: peonage contracts. After slavery was abolished, many freedmen would sign "peonage" contracts, in which they were forced to provide service to pay off a debate. This was slavery by other means. The Supreme Court declared such peonage contracts to violate the Thirteenth Amendment in Bailey v. Alabama.
If in fact a surrogacy contract forces a woman to undergo an abortion against her will, I think such a contract would run afoul of the Thirteenth Amendment. Indeed, the entire notion of surrogacy is at odds with the Thirteenth Amendment.
I found an article published 25 years ago from a progressive author arguing that surrogacy contracts are exploitative of poor women and were a form of peonage. This argument hasn't gained much traction, I think, because wealthy, elite women routinely seek to use surrogacy, especially later in their lives, to have children. So this practice must be maintained.
I don't think this problem is isolated to the left. Conservatives need to reckon with both IVF and surrogacy.
There are two overlapping themes that diverge in important ways. First, most conservatives are pro-family and favor policies that let more parents have more children. Second, most conservative are pro-life and favor policies that preserve life from conception. In-vitro fertilization and surrogacy creates a tension between these two goals. Generally with IVF, many embryos are fertilized, and only some of them are implanted. The process will invariably require the destruction of the remaining fertilized embryos. Moreover, when the embryo is implanted in a surrogate, there is the risk that the person carrying the pregnancy may bond with the child and want to keep it. Or, as is the case with the woman from Alaska, the couple that contributed the fertilized embryo want to terminate their own child halfway through the pregnancy. The state is then responsible for physically separating a new-born child from the woman that carried him for nine months.
I don't think most pro-life people have fully grappled with the implications of both IVF and surrogacy.
We are Canada now. Surrogate McKenna West has been sued by Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed for refusing to abort Baby Gabriel:
Biological parents sue surrogate McKenna West for $100K for breaching contract, not aborting baby
By Patrick Reilly - August 19, 2026The biological parents of the child birthed by surrogate mother McKenna West are suing her more than $100,000 for keeping the baby rather than abort it at their request, according to a report.
Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed filed a countersuit against West, a 28-year-old nurse from Alaska, weeks before she gave birth in Texas to their baby, who was born with a serious and rare heart defect, TMZ reported.
They agreed to pay West $60,000 to carry their child — with an abortion clause that allowed them to terminate the pregnancy if there were issues with the fetus, according to the lawsuit.
At around 20 weeks, the unborn child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening medical condition — but West refused their request to abort it, and instead traveled to Texas, where she would be recognized as the birth mother under state law.
The baby was born on Aug. 12. West named him Gabriel, but the biological parents insist his name is Rumi.
Gilkar and Ahmed are asking a judge to award them more than $100,000 in damages from McKenna for breaking the deal plus unspecified damages for her alleged “malicious, outrageous conduct.”
West had two previous pregnancies and was well aware of the journey, according to the lawsuit.
The intended parents denied they ever threatened to force McKenna to abort the baby.
West’s decision to keep the baby has ignited a national discussion on abortion and surrogacy — and has involved courts and officials in three states.
Gilkar and Ahmed “haven’t given [West] anything” since she declined to terminate the pregnancy, Lincoln Wilson, an attorney for West, told The Post.
The mother is preparing an all-out legal battle to become Gabriel’s legal parent.
“She is seeking parentage of the child because she gave birth in Texas, and in Texas, if you give birth to a child, it’s your child,” Wilson said.
However, reproductive law attorney Marla Neufeld previously told The Post that the surrogate has virtually no legal claim to the child.
Hypoplastic left heart syndrome is a congenital heart defect that requires multiple surgeries and leaves survivors facing lifelong medical care and potentially serious health complications.
“Every life matters. No woman should be forced to end the life of the baby she is carrying — including me … Baby Gabriel should receive a chance at life,” West said told The Post in a statement.
McKenna named the baby "Gabriel" while the biological parents say the baby's name is "Rumi". The baby underwent open heart surgery on the 17th and is now recovering. A long hospital stay is anticipated.
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