I really hope this is the end.
The Texas Supreme Court has rejected a surrogate’s attempt to keep the child she delivered in Texas, clearing the way for the biological parents to take the medically fragile infant to California.
On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court denied the request by McKenna West, an Alaskan surrogate who had tried to block the biological parents from removing the 1-month-old from Texas and taking him to a hospital in Los Angeles, where the couple lives.
“Sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter,” the court ruled, siding in favor of parents Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. “The limited materials before this Court describe uncontroverted medical testimony of the child’s Texas physician indicating that ‘the child’s best interest in order to preserve the child’s life as long as possible [i]s an ICU-to-ICU transfer.’”
Among the testimony the Texas Supreme Court considered was that of both the guardian ad litem appointed by the court to represent the best interests of the infant and that of his doctors at Children’s Hospital in Dallas, where he’s being treated. Both had testified at an Aug. 25 hearing in Dallas. The trial court case has since been sealed from the public’s view.
A brief filed by the guardian ad litem Susan Duesler to the Texas Supreme Court says the baby’s doctor testified in court that he recommends that the child’s remaining surgeries be performed in a Los Angeles hospital and not doing the transfer soon would create “much more complicated treatment” for the baby. Duesler said the child, who the biological parents have named Rumi, should get the care his doctor recommends, which may include transferring the child to Los Angeles.
“The Guardian Ad Litem testified that the Parents’ ‘have followed the recommendations of the doctors to a T’ and the doctors have ‘unequivocally, no’ concerns regarding the Parents medical decision-making,” the couple’s lawyers stated in a brief before the Texas Supreme Court.
Lawyers for the parents also insisted that hospice is not part of the child’s medical plan.
Since Rumi’s birth in Dallas on Aug. 12, he’s been the subject of a high-profile, multi-state dispute that landed there this summer after West flew to Texas, which bans abortion, to seek custody of the child.
[…]
Rumi’s parents have also filed a heavily redacted response to West’s request to the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in the matter. Gilkar and Ahmed argue the case has already been decided and falls outside the high court’s jurisdiction. If the nation’s highest court were to intervene and rule in favor of West, it would interrupt their child’s medical care with “chaos.”
See here for the previous update and here for the Court’s one-paragraph order. This was a motion for a temporary restraining order that was part of a writ of mandamus, which I guess came up after that previous story was written. If we believe that SCOTUS will see no reason to butt in, then I do think this is over – this story notes that surrogate McKenna West has also lost cases in California and Alaska, so one presumes her options for further action are decreasing rapidly. I hope it’s over. Let these people and their kid get on with their future, whatever may happen, in peace. Slate, which explains that West is asking SCOTUS to terminate the parents’ custody because they had initially asked her to have an abortion, even though it was in her contract, has more.