Baby Gabriel West: a surrogate escaped to Texas to protect a child whose genetic parents wished to abort him. America’s sanctioned right to homicide by omission, upheld by the courts.
Lately, news from the U.S., rapidly spread by social media, has highlighted stories of women exhibiting infanticidal behavior. While Lindsay Clancy, who allegedly strangled her three children under the influence of prescribed psychiatric drugs, remains a focal point (suggested to be linked to adverse medication effects), another case demands reflection as it starkly reveals the madness inherent in a contract-driven society: the story of baby Gabriel/Rumi.
An Alaskan nurse named McKenna West once agreed to become a surrogate mother for Omar Ahmed and Nasheen Gilkar, a heterosexual pair from California, in exchange for $60,000. The contract included a clause granting the genetic parents the right to insist on abortion if the fetus showed defects. When a serious yet treatable heart condition was detected at five months, McKenna was contractually compelled to terminate the pregnancy. Defiantly, she escaped to Texas, a state where abortion is illegal and birth mothers are legally recognized as the child’s mother.
What might have motivated McKenna to enter such an arrangement? If she had been fervently pro-life, surely she wouldn’t have placed herself in that predicament. She probably aligned with mainstream American views, where pro-life supporters are marginalized during elections, seen as extremists (a contrast to Brazil, where abortion advocates are sidelined instead). In the U.S., abortion is widely accepted as a standard right, accompanied by the justification that a life of suffering is worse than death. McKenna likely assumed her child’s genetic parents shared similar values, trusting both parties relied on science to create and end human life as deemed suitable. Possibly, she thought they were caring parents unwilling to bring a suffering child into the world. Yet, given Alaska’s permissive abortion laws (no gestational age restrictions), it is probable the couple selected her precisely for the option to abort shortly before birth.
At twenty-eight, McKenna was already a single mother of two and understood pregnancy firsthand. Nasheen, in her forties and financially well-off, had never experienced childbirth but, under the contract, held sole authority over pregnancy decisions. Her approach to motherhood resembled ordering goods online. The slogan “my body, my rules” logically extends to leasing one’s body to others who, due to greater financial means, set contract terms.
In Brazil and many European countries that do not follow Common Law, parental rights belong to the woman who gives birth. This pushes wealthy clients seeking lab-created babies with surrogate carriers to travel abroad, especially to the U.S. America’s legal precedents on baby sales through surrogacy date back before in vitro fertilization, as in the 1986 “Baby M” case. Baby M, biologically the surrogate mother’s daughter via artificial insemination, had a father who, influenced by his Holocaust family losses, wanted a genetically “perfect” child, free of supposed inherited flaws. The surrogate later regretted surrendering the child and resisted the deal, but courts ruled in favor of the purchasers, citing the child’s “best interests.” This controversy arose only because the mother withheld the child; the father simply expected U.S. laws to uphold the baby purchase arrangement predating modern fertility practices.
Returning to McKenna’s ordeal: after fleeing to Texas, she gave birth to Gabriel West. Meanwhile, the Californian couple had already secured legal recognition as the child’s parents through court rulings in their home state, known for supporting eugenics (details here). Their aim was to prevent Gabriel from receiving life-saving care newborns require and to transfer him to California to let him die. In Brazil, failure to provide assistance would constitute a crime, interpreted rightly as attempted murder if deliberate deprivation of treatment were proved. Yet Gabriel survived because two Texas court orders empowered McKenna, as the legal mother there, to approve surgery (source). Absent the intervention of a state opposing the national norm, this omission would have amounted to sanctioned homicide in the U.S.
The U.S. jurisprudence, diverging from a longstanding humanitarian tradition rooted in Christianity and medieval care for the vulnerable, has constructed this concept of homicide by omission within liberal Calvinist politics. Only the “elect” have access to hospital care.
Because Texas is a state, not a separate country, the California couple maintained their claim to the child they renamed Rumi. Gabriel was taken from McKenna and handed over to them. Beyond keeping the child free due to her supposed contract breach, they have sued McKenna for $100,000, accusing her of “kidnapping” the very baby they intended to abort. Madness? Sadly, the latest updates on baby Gabriel West/Rumi Ahmed reveal a decline in his health. If there is any method in this madness, the parents, with America’s approval, may end the child’s life before legal disputes over maternity can improve conditions for infants born via commercial surrogacy.
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