Texas court orders hospitals to provide lifesaving care to baby at center of surrogacy dispute

Two hospitals in Texas have been ordered to provide lifesaving care for a soon-to-be-born baby at the center of an interstate surrogacy dispute.

State Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced in an Aug. 11 press release that UT Southwestern Medical Center and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas were legally obligated to care for Gabriel, a baby due to be born on Sept. 2 to surrogate mother McKenna West. A Texas district court had earlier ruled that the hospitals would be required to care for the baby.

In an earlier letter to the hospitals on Aug. 10, Paxton said Gabriel had been diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and that his “intended parents” said they would seek to “refuse consent” to an operation.

The parents, identified in court documents as Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, “may seek to move the child to California so that treatment can be withheld there,” the letter said.

West reportedly traveled to Texas from Alaska after Gilkar and Ahmed urged her to seek an abortion after the diagnosis of the syndrome, according to news reports. She allegedly offered to take full responsibility of the baby, though the baby’s biological parents reportedly…