Surrogacy Contract Forces Woman to Choose Between Child and Legal Rights
A woman’s refusal to abort a child led to a legal battle over custody and life. Surrogacy contracts are under scrutiny.
6 min read
Mckenna West, a single mother from Alaska, entered surrogacy with the hope of helping an infertile couple have a child while earning money for her family. She was matched with a California couple and became pregnant through IVF. However, her journey took a tragic turn when doctors diagnosed the baby boy with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital heart condition requiring surgical treatment.
The genetic parents invoked an abortion clause in the surrogacy contract, demanding McKenna abort their son at 24 weeks, a stage of pregnancy where the baby is remarkably developed and could survive outside the womb. If she refused, McKenna could face over $100,000 in financial liability. The most common procedure at this stage is dilation and evacuation (D&E), which involves dilating the cervix before forceps are used to remove the baby, often by dismemberment. In some cases, a lethal injection may be administered, causing a heart attack with a drug such as digoxin.
McKenna refused the demand, a decision that saved the child’s life. She sought a hospital in Texas known for life-saving surgeries for the baby, but the legal battle over his medical treatment and custody continued. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton intervened, and a court appointed a guardian to protect the child’s medical interests. Despite this, the courts ruled that the genetic parents have legal custody of the child. On September 22, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court denied McKenna’s emergency request to halt the California court order recognizing the genetic parents as the child’s legal parents, leaving the order in place.
McKenna was separated from the child she carried and protected when others wanted his life ended. This heartbreaking separation highlights the deep injustice of commercial surrogacy, which commodifies human relationships and treats both the child and mother as parties in a contract rather than as human beings.
The Legal and Ethical Implications of Surrogacy Contracts
McKenna’s case exposes the dangers of surrogacy contracts that allow for abortion demands. A woman should never face financial ruin for refusing to undergo an abortion. No contract should give another person the power to demand the death of the child she is carrying or punish her financially for saying no. Commercial surrogacy places money and contractual obligations around pregnancy and even the life of a living human child. The adults negotiate the terms, but the child has no voice in the agreement governing his conception, gestation, custody, or relationship with the woman whose body sustained him for nine months.
Contracts cannot anticipate what happens when a child does not meet the expectations of the adults who commissioned the arrangement. What if the baby is considered “imperfect” in the eyes of the buying parents? In McKenna’s case, a medical diagnosis was all it took. The genetic parents wanted an abortion. McKenna did not. A contractual arrangement that was supposed to govern the commercial transaction surrounding a pregnancy suddenly became a weapon that could be used to try to force a woman to end the life of the child growing inside her.
The Need for Legal Reform and Ethical Reflection
Whatever one believes about the complicated custody questions that followed, one fact is impossible to ignore: this child is alive today because McKenna refused to abort him. This should force a more serious reckoning with surrogacy. Pregnancy is not a service that can be purchased, and a child is not a product whose terms can be negotiated before birth. When money, parental rights, medical decisions, and expectations about the characteristics of a child are bound together in a contract, the dignity of both women and children is unacceptably compromised.
Abortion-demand clauses in surrogacy contracts should be banned. Fortunately, there is already legislation in Congress that would do just that. Courts should also recognize the humanity and rights of every mother and preborn child. In America, the child must come first.
McKenna’s case has shown exactly where such clauses can lead. The child she carried is alive today because she refused to obey one. Her story is heartbreaking on its own, but it also exposes something much larger. Surrogacy asks the law to turn some of the most intimate human relationships imaginable into matters of contract. Before a child is born, agreements can attempt to determine who controls decisions during pregnancy, what happens if the child has a disability, what medical procedures the woman carrying him may be expected to undergo, and who will have custody of the child after birth.
The abortion clause in McKenna’s contract shows how dangerous that can become. A woman should never face financial ruin because she refuses to undergo an abortion. No contract should give another person the power to demand the death of the child she is carrying or punish her financially for saying no. Commercial surrogacy places money and contractual obligations around pregnancy and even the life of a living human child. The adults negotiate the terms. The child cannot. He has no voice in the agreement governing his conception, gestation, custody, or relationship with the woman whose body sustained him for nine months.
Contracts cannot anticipate what happens when a child does not meet the expectations of the adults who commissioned the arrangement. What if the baby is “imperfect” in the eyes of the buying parents? In McKenna’s case, a medical diagnosis was all it took. The genetic parents wanted an abortion. McKenna did not. A contractual arrangement that was supposed to govern the commercial transaction surrounding a pregnancy suddenly became a weapon that could be used to try to force a woman to end the life of the child growing inside her.
Whatever one believes about the complicated custody questions that followed, one fact is impossible to ignore: this child is alive today because McKenna refused to abort him. That should force a more serious reckoning with surrogacy. Pregnancy is not a service that can be purchased, and a child is not a product whose terms can be negotiated before birth. When money, parental rights, medical decisions, and expectations about the characteristics of a child are bound together in a contract, the dignity of both women and children is unacceptably compromised.
Abortion-demand clauses in surrogacy contracts should be banned. Thankfully, there is already legislation in Congress that would do just that. Courts should also recognize the humanity and rights of every mother and preborn child. In America, the child must come first.
McKenna’s case has shown exactly where such clauses can lead. The child she carried is alive today because she refused to obey one. Her story is heartbreaking on its own, but it also exposes something much larger. Surrogacy asks the law to turn some of the most intimate human relationships imaginable into matters of contract. Before a child is born, agreements can attempt to determine who controls decisions during pregnancy, what happens if the child has a disability, what medical procedures the woman carrying him may be expected to undergo, and who will have custody of the child after birth.
Source: Daily Wire
