A month-old infant with a rare and severe heart defect can be relocated from Texas to Los Angeles for medical treatment, the Texas Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The decision follows a California court's recognition of the biological parents' custody rights weeks prior.
The court stated that "sustaining the life of the medically fragile child is the paramount concern in this time-sensitive matter." The infant, named Rumi by his biological parents, has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a condition that impedes blood flow and requires extensive surgery. Without treatment, the defect can be fatal.
The surrogate, McKenna West, had sought to prevent the biological parents from taking the child to a hospital in Los Angeles, where the couple resides. The court cited testimony from the infant's Texas physician, who described the window for an ICU-to-ICU transfer as short and "ripe now."
The condition was detected when the baby was a fetus, leading biological parents Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed to request a termination of the pregnancy. West, who lives in Alaska, travelled to Texas, where abortion is illegal, to deliver the child.