Two Black surrogates, two extraordinary cases and one complicated question: Where are the boundaries?
TheGrio...
Two recent cases involving Black surrogates are exposing difficult questions about reproductive autonomy, custody and the limits of contracts.
A nurse from Alaska, at the center of an increasingly complicated surrogacy battle, is now being sued for more than $100,000 by the biological parents of the baby she carried after refusing to terminate the pregnancy.
Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, a California couple and the parents of the newborn, filed a lawsuit against 28-year-old McKenna West, alleging “malicious, outrageous conduct” in the situation, according to court documents reviewed by TMZ.
In August 2025, the couple entered into a gestational surrogacy agreement with West through Connecticut-based Worldwide Surrogacy Specialists and agreed to pay West $60,000 to carry their child. Their contract also included provisions addressing termination of the pregnancy.
Things first began to go awry after a 20-week anatomy scan revealed the baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome, or HLHS, a severe congenital heart defect in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped and requires significant medical intervention after birth.
According to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press, Gilkar and Ahmed said West initially agreed to terminate the pregnancy following the diagnosis before changing her mind and abruptly cutting off contact. Meanwhile, West has alleged the couple pressured her for weeks to have an abortion, something they deny. Legally, they actually couldn’t force her to have one. Despite what West agreed to in the surrogacy contract, Alaska’s constitutional protections for reproductive autonomy meant the decision ultimately rested with her.
West continued the pregnancy and eventually traveled to Texas, where abortion is banned, with support from anti-abortion advocates. Two days before giving birth, she petitioned a Dallas court for custody and the ability to make medical decisions for the child. She gave birth Aug. 12.
By then, a California court had determined Gilkar and Ahmed were the child’s legal parents. A Dallas judge subsequently barred West from making medical decisions for the baby or representing herself as his mother.
The couple is seeking damages for what they allege was a breach of their agreement.
The extraordinary case arrives during a summer in which surrogacy has seemingly been testing its limits, with Black women in particular. Just weeks earlier, a surrogate in Florida, Kyla Simpson, made national headlines after attempting to seek custody for the surviving triplets she carried and delivered after their intended parent did not come pick them up.
After giving birth to triplets in November 2024, Chen Zhou, a single father living in China, claims he was unable to secure a visa to come to the United States to retrieve the children. Simpson ended up caring for them for months. One child later died, and Simpson has since sought to adopt the two surviving boys.
Simpson’s case raised the question of what happens when a surrogate unexpectedly becomes responsible for the children she agreed to carry. Meanwhile, West’s case asks almost the opposite: What happens when a surrogate agrees to carry someone else’s child under specific terms, then decides she can no longer abide by them? For Black women, it’s a particularly uncomfortable question.
Black women’s reproductive autonomy has historically been violated in nearly every direction, from the exploitation of enslaved women’s reproduction to forced and coerced sterilizations and beyond. Today, Black women continue to face stark racial disparities in reproductive health care and are significantly more likely than their white counterparts to die from pregnancy-related causes.
Bodily autonomy meant West could decide she would not undergo an abortion, regardless of what she had previously agreed to. A Black woman signing a surrogacy contract does not mean signing away control of her body. West didn’t merely exercise her bodily autonomy and continue the pregnancy. While she had the bodily autonomy to decide to undergo an abortion regardless of the previously agreed-upon arrangement, she did not have the right to assume parental control over the child once it arrived and seek custody and attempt to make medical decisions for the child on its parents’ behalf.
“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 in a statement.
At times, the case has taken on an almost Solomonic quality, with people on opposing sides claiming to be protecting the same baby while fundamentally disagreeing over what protecting him means. The child even has two names. West and her supporters call him Gabriel. Gilkar and Ahmed have said their son is named Rumi.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton entered the fight before the birth, accusing the couple of refusing lifesaving treatment for their son and securing a court order requiring medically necessary care. Gilkar and Ahmed denied the allegations and accused Paxton and West of turning their family’s medical crisis into “political theater.” Their son is now receiving medical care in Dallas.
For Black families, West’s case presents an uneasy collision of rights that don’t fit neatly on opposing sides.
Protecting a Black woman’s bodily autonomy means recognizing that she cannot sign away her right to refuse a medical procedure. It doesn’t mean a contract carries no consequences. And it doesn’t mean carrying another person’s child gives her the right to become that child’s parent.
Surrogacy requires those boundaries to coexist. This summer is seriously testing what happens when they don’t.