On July 28, 2026, the Alaska Superior Court failed to protect an Alaskan surrogate’s constitutional right to privacy and ruled that a California court may dictate the place where she gives birth and the medical team to treat her. The case involves a California couple who tried to force an Alaskan surrogate mother to get a late-term abortion when the baby was diagnosed with a serious, but treatable heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS).
After the surrogate mother refused abortion, she relocated to Texas so she could deliver the baby at a leading hospital specializing in HLHS. The California couple then tried to force the surrogate mother to give birth in California with a medical team of their choosing. Rather than upholding the Alaskan surrogate mother’s rights to make her own medical decisions, the Alaska Superior Court ruled that California has jurisdiction over the birthplace. The Court’s decision ignored the Alaska Department of Law’s Statement of Interest arguing that the surrogate mother’s constitutional right to privacy trumps the surrogacy contract.
After the unborn baby’s diagnosis, the California couple decided they did not want the baby to live despite evidence of treatability. The couple demanded the woman undergo a late-term, high-risk abortion in Seattle, Washington. No Alaskan doctor would perform the abortion, which would have been an invasive, two-day long surgical procedure to end the life of a baby inside a woman unwilling to have that procedure. The couple, who appear as A.B. and C.D. in the legal briefs, tried to invoke an abortion-upon-demand clause in the Surrogacy Agreement.
According to the legal brief, the California couple “intended to coerce, abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade McKenna into a late-term, two-day surgical abortion of Baby Gabriel without knowing and voluntary consent.”
McKenna West, the surrogate mother, stated that she could not abort “this precious baby who had now become a part of her.” She offered to simply cut ties with A.B. and C.D. and relieve them of any financial responsibility. A.B. and C.D. were discontent with allowing the baby to live despite McKenna’s offer to either raise the baby or place the baby for adoption, and instead they threatened to sue McKenna for over $250,000 for breaching the Surrogacy Agreement.
Confident that McKenna would comply, the California couple dismissed their parentage proceedings in Alaska state court. However, McKenna did not comply and insisted on giving birth to the baby.
McKenna stated: “Do [A.B. and C.D.] know they are expecting me to go have this baby boy’s heart injected with a solution that will stop his heart and then he’ll be literally ripped apart and dismembered as he’s taken from my uterus? I do not discount the extremely difficult journey they have been on…, but I am being faced with physically going through the dismemberment of a 23 week old baby… as gruesome as this is to say, it’s the truth.”
After McKenna continued to refuse abortion, the California couple attempted to reopen the parentage proceedings in Alaska to establish parental rights of the unborn baby. When the parentage proceedings did not proceed at a speed to their liking, they sought to establish parental rights in a California Court despite the Surrogacy Agreement’s explicit clause providing “the laws of the State of Alaska shall govern this Agreement.”
McKenna then filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of Alaska seeking sole custody of the baby, arguing that “if a court determines that A.B. and C.D. are the legal parents of Baby Gabriel, he will suffer clear detriment if placed in their custody instead of with McKenna” because “A.B. and C.D. have sought to end Baby Gabriel’s life and continue to refuse to commit to the lifesaving procedures he requires.”
Doing all in her power to give the baby the best possible life, McKenna relocated to Texas so she could have the baby in the nation’s leading pediatric hospital specializing in Baby Gabriel’s heart condition. The California couple tried to order her to California to be receive prenatal care and labor and delivery care from doctors of their choosing.
Upon hearing of the proceedings, the State of Alaska issued a Statement of Interest, arguing that “the Alaska Constitution protects the right of a surrogate mother to make deeply personal medical decisions— including whether to continue her pregnancy, where she will receive prenatal care, which doctors will help her manage her high-risk pregnancy, and who ultimately will treat her as she labors and delivers the baby.”
According to the State of Alaska’s statement, “The constitutional right of privacy protects a woman’s autonomy to make those decisions for herself. It does not empower contracting parties or courts to make them for her here.”
The California couple then filed an objection to the State of Alaska’s Statement of Interest, claiming “McKenna West and her drove of out-of-state, special-interest-driven attorneys have taken the bullying and intimidation in this case to a new level: using the power of the State of Alaska to intervene in legally irrelevant manner and to ignore the constitutional rights of Defendants A.B. and C.D. as parents, their rights of privacy to make decisions regarding the health and medical care for their son, and the best interests of their unborn child.”
Despite previously seeking to kill that same unborn child, A.B. and C.D. assert parental rights. They also assert that McKenna “continues to cause confusion and stress at a time when the only interests being considered should be the child’s.”
Because the Alaska Superior Court refused to act in the best interest of the child, instead shifting jurisdiction to California, the fate of baby Gabriel now lies in the hands of California judges. Judges who hold the power to decide whether it is just for a couple to buy a woman’s body to fulfill their own desires, threaten her with financial ruin if she does not end the human life inside her simply because he was not the product they wanted, and claim a right to dictate the woman’s birth experience and the baby’s medical care.
