SCOTUS stays out of thorny surrogacy fight

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined, without comment from Justice Elena Kagan, to intervene in a custody dispute over baby Rumi, leaving in place a California court order granting parental rights to Omar Ahmed and Nausheen Gilkar. Surrogate McKenna West had asked the justices to block that order after a dispute over the infant's care for hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening congenital condition.

The fight began after a 20-week scan revealed the fetus's heart condition; Ahmed and Gilkar chose to terminate, but West refused and, with support from the Texas attorney general's office and anti-abortion activists, gave birth to Rumi in Texas in August. The Texas AG has since withdrawn, and a Texas court has already dismissed West from the case under the California parentage order.

West's attorneys, from the Alliance for Defending Freedom, argued the case belonged in Alaska and that West had been denied updates on the baby's condition. Ahmed and Gilkar's attorney noted that West's filings across three states and multiple courts have been rejected by every court that has heard them, including now the nation's highest.

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