DALLAS – A surrogate mother, McKenna West, delivered an emotional testimony in a Dallas court on Tuesday, describing the late-term abortion procedure she refused to undergo. The court hearing addressed a temporary restraining order that would prevent her from making decisions about the critically ill baby she is carrying.
West, a 28-year-old nurse from Alaska, called the prospect of an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation "terrifying." She stated her intention to protect the child, despite the wishes of the baby's biological parents, Nasheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed, who wanted to abort the fetus after learning it had a life-threatening but treatable heart condition. West carried the child to full-term after leaving the biological parents' home state and traveling to Texas.
"I knew that I wanted to protect him and I knew he deserved to be protected," West told the court, her voice breaking. She tearfully detailed the procedure she was contractually obligated to perform but refused. "It would have been a two-day procedure…they would have injected his heart with a solution that would stop it," West explained, adding that the fetus would have been removed two days later. "It was terrifying."
