More than a month after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured an emergency order aimed at protecting an unborn baby diagnosed with a serious heart condition, the child is now able to leave Texas for medical treatment in California.
Last week, the Texas Supreme Court denied surrogate McKenna West’s request to prevent the 1-month-old child, known as Rumi by his biological parents and Gabriel by West, from being transferred to Los Angeles, where his biological parents live. The ruling cleared the way for the infant to leave Texas for treatment.
“Sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter. 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 of the child’ and that “the timing of the recommended transfer is ripe now, with the window only open for a short time to do so,” the court wrote.
The child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped.
After learning of the heart defect, West and her legal team alleged that the biological parents asked her to terminate the pregnancy. West, who is from Alaska, traveled to Texas and sought custody of the child, saying she wanted to ensure he received medical treatment.
The Guardian reported that West and her legal team have stated that the biological parents asked West to have an abortion, while the biological parents’ lawyers say that West agreed to the abortion, before fighting them in a legal battle for custody.
The legal dispute escalated after West traveled to Texas. Paxton intervened in the case and secured an emergency order preventing the child from being removed from the state while the custody dispute was being litigated. The order also required that the child receive medically necessary care.
A Dallas County judge subsequently entered an emergency temporary order preventing Gabriel from being removed from Texas.
Earlier this month, West asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that the biological parents might not provide the infant with ongoing life-saving medical care. Her filing raised concerns that the child could be transferred to California and placed in hospice care. The biological parents’ attorneys disputed that claim and said hospice was not part of the child’s medical plan.
The U.S. Supreme Court docket shows that West’s application for a stay was filed Sept. 9 and that a response from the biological parents was requested.
Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court on Sept. 17 denied West’s request for temporary relief. The court said the medical evidence before it supported the need for a timely transfer and noted that the child’s physician had recommended the move to preserve the child’s life for as long as possible.
The biological parents’ attorneys argued in a court filing that the case had already been resolved through prior proceedings recognizing their parental rights and that further intervention would disrupt Rumi’s medical care.
“West’s requested stay to the United States Supreme Court threatens the continuity of Rumi’s medical care,” Lee Budner, an attorney for the biological parents said in a Friday statement. “A stay would not change who Rumi’s parents are. It would only create confusion over medical decision-making authority and jeopardize the providers’ ability to rely on the parents’ consent to Rumi’s treatment.”
