Two high‑profile surrogacy disputes involving Black women have spotlighted tensions among bodily autonomy, contract obligations and parental rights. In Alaska and Texas, a surrogate who refused to terminate a pregnancy after an HLHS diagnosis is being sued by intended parents who had paid $60,000 under a surrogacy contract; courts in California and Texas have issued conflicting orders about parentage and medical decision‑making. The cases — along with a separate Florida dispute over triplets — raise urgent legal and racial justice questions about how surrogacy agreements should handle medical crises.
Two Black Surrogates, Two High‑Profile Disputes: Where Do Bodily Autonomy, Contracts and Parentage Meet?
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Two recent legal battles involving Black surrogates have thrust complicated questions about reproductive autonomy, contract enforceability and parental rights into the spotlight.
Case One: McKenna West
A nurse from Alaska, 28-year-old McKenna West, is facing a lawsuit seeking more than $100,000 after she declined to terminate a pregnancy she was carrying under a gestational surrogacy agreement. The intended parents, Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed of California, say they paid West $60,000 through Connecticut-based Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists and that the contract included provisions covering termination.
After a 20-week anatomy scan revealed the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a severe congenital heart defect, the parties’ account of events diverged. Gilkar and Ahmed say West initially agreed to terminate the pregnancy and then cut off contact; West says the couple pressured her to have an abortion. Under Alaska’s constitutional protections for reproductive autonomy, the ultimate medical decision legally rested with West.
West carried the pregnancy to term and, with support from anti-abortion advocates, traveled to Texas — where abortion is banned. Two days before giving birth on Aug. 12, 2025, she petitioned a Dallas court seeking custody and authority to make medical decisions for the newborn. By the time of birth, a California court had already recognized Gilkar and Ahmed as the child’s legal parents. A Dallas judge later barred West from making medical decisions for the infant or representing herself as his mother. Gilkar and Ahmed are pursuing damages for breach of contract.
Case Two: Kyla Simpson
Weeks earlier in Florida, surrogate Kyla Simpson drew national attention after she cared for triplets she had carried when the intended parent — Chen Zhou, a single father living in China — could not come to the U.S. to retrieve them. Simpson cared for the infants for months; one child later died and she has since sought to adopt the two surviving boys. That dispute raised questions about what happens when a surrogate becomes the de facto caregiver despite contractual expectations.
Legal, Ethical and Racial Context
These cases sit at the intersection of several competing claims: a surrogate’s right to bodily autonomy, intended parents’ contractual and parental expectations, and the legal system’s role in resolving conflicts that arise before or after birth. For Black women, the stakes are intensified by a long and painful history of control over Black reproductive bodies — from slavery to forced sterilizations — and persistent disparities in maternal and perinatal health outcomes.
“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 New York Post.
At times the West dispute has taken on a near‑Solomonic quality: parties and advocates claim to be protecting the same infant while sharply disagreeing on what protection requires. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened before the birth, accusing the intended parents of refusing lifesaving care for the fetus and obtaining a court order to ensure medically necessary treatment. The parents denied politicizing their child’s medical crisis. The newborn is now receiving medical care in Dallas.
What This Means Going Forward
Neither case offers tidy answers. Courts will increasingly be asked to reconcile contractual language with constitutional protections for bodily autonomy, and to draw clearer lines about when and how parental rights vest in surrogacy arrangements. Lawmakers, clinics and agencies that arrange surrogacy will likely face pressure to tighten consent processes, clarify contingency plans for severe fetal diagnoses, and pay attention to how racial and social dynamics shape outcomes for surrogates and families.
These disputes illustrate that surrogacy—particularly when complicated by medical crises and racial inequities—requires careful legal frameworks and ethical guardrails to balance the autonomy and protections of surrogates with the reasonable expectations of intended parents.
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