surrogacy

Breaking: Baby Gabriel Born as Texas Court Issues Order Protecting His Chance at Life

There’s a major update in the case of Alaska surrogate McKenna West and baby Gabriel. Baby Gabriel has just been born as a court in Texas orders that he receive life-sustaining medical care.

As previously reported by the Daily Citizen, McKenna has been fighting to save Gabriel’s life after his biological parents told her to abort him when he was diagnosed with a serious but treatable heart condition that requires surgery after birth.   

McKenna refused to get an abortion. 

Now, she’s in Texas and Attorney General Ken Paxton has stepped in to help her and Gabriel. 

On Monday, August 10th, AG Paxton intervened in the case, filing a 58-page brief, requesting the court to grant life-sustaining medical treatment to Gabriel following his birth. 

Tuesday, August 11th, the court granted the request. 

Baby Gabriel was born on Wednesday, August 12, 2026, and has been admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit where he will receive life-sustaining heart surgery at a hospital that has a 100% success rate in performing this procedure.

Under the court order, doctors must provide Gabriel with medically necessary stabilizing and life-saving medical care.

The court also decided that Texas law will govern Gabriel’s protection and medical decision-making. Though it was unwilling to allow Texas law to govern his parentage.

The court appointed a guardian ad litem – a neutral person to protect Gabriel’s interests and represent him in ongoing decision making. 

Importantly, the court held that once Gabriel is born, he cannot be removed from the state of Texas, discharged from the hospital or transferred to another medical facility unless for medical necessary care.

The order also addressed what will happen if someone refuses to consent to treatment that doctors believe Gabriel needs. According to the order, if there is a refusal to consent to medically necessary treatment, the court will hold an emergency hearing within two hours of notification and will determine whether they can override the refusal based on the evidence.

Gabriel’s story highlights one of the most serious problems with commercialized surrogacy and IVF — the disconnect between intentionally creating human life and then accepting that child when things don’t go as planned. 

A baby is not a product that can simply be rejected because of an unexpected diagnosis. 

Gabriel’s life has value regardless of his heart condition. He’s a human being with rights and he deserves to be protected. 

The Daily Citizen will continue to follow this developing story. 

Related articles and resources: 

Alaska Surrogate Battles to Keep Baby After Abortion Demand

Perspectives on Surrogate Motherhood

What Does The Bible Say About Surrogacy?

Why Adoption is Beautiful and Surrogacy Isn’t

Alaska Surrogate Battles to Keep Baby After Abortion Demand

What happens when a surrogate refuses to abort the baby she’s carrying? 

This week, Live Action News released an exclusive interview that shines light on a significant moral dilemma surrounding surrogacy: What happens when motherhood is commercialized, and babies are treated like property that can be discarded through a contract?

Surrogate Backstory

According to Live Action News, McKenna West, an Alaskan nurse and single mom, agreed to become a surrogate for a couple from California to help them experience the gift of a child.

Everything seemed to be going well until the 20-week ultrasound, when doctors diagnosed the baby boy, whom McKenna calls Gabriel, with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a serious congenital heart defect. The diagnosis is life-threatening and requires multiple surgeries between birth and three years of age, but it is treatable. 

According to McKenna and court filings obtained by Live Action News, the couple told her to get an abortion, per the surrogate contract. She refused, and the couple filed a lawsuit against her.

According to court documents, no doctor in Alaska would perform an abortion at 22 weeks, which would have entailed dismembering the baby’s body. 

McKenna says a podcaster friend got in touch with Lila Rose of Live Action, and Lila agreed to help McKenna and her children get to Texas, where heart specialists could save baby Gabriel’s life.

The California couple stopped sending money to McKenna because she refused to abort the baby. They’re now demanding that their money be returned and are seeking additional monetary damages. 

Current Situation

McKenna is now 36 weeks pregnant and in Texas. Gabriel is due September 2, 2026.

In a lawsuit, the California couple is demanding that McKenna travel to California to deliver the baby, where it is unclear if they will provide the medical care that he needs or leave him to die after birth.

McKenna says she is willing to travel to California to deliver Gabriel, but only if they guarantee he will be given the medical assistance he needs to live. According to Live Action News, the California couple has not agreed to this condition.

McKenna has filed for custody of Gabriel so she can authorize doctors to perform life-saving heart surgery after he is born.

Couples seeking surrogates almost always choose to work with gestational surrogates who are not genetically related to the baby, rather than traditional surrogates, to increase their chances of retaining legal authority over the child. 

The legal proceedings are ongoing in Alaska and in California. It’s possible a court in California could determine where McKenna gives birth and what medical team provides care to Gabriel. 

McKenna is being represented by Lincoln Wilson, a former Alliance Defending Freedom attorney who is now a partner at First & Fourteenth PLLC. 

Bigger Picture

Advocates of surrogacy have mostly considered the practice as an act of generosity that helps families have children. There are likely many people who have entered into these agreements with compassionate and sincere intentions to do good. But commercial surrogacy raises significant moral questions that must be addressed. 

What happens when a baby has a disability?

What happens when a baby doesn’t meet the expectations of adults?

What happens when adults disagree about whether the child should have the opportunity to live?

Should a woman be forced to get an abortion?

These might sound like hypothetical questions, but they aren’t for McKenna and baby Gabriel.

For those of us who believe that every human life has inherent dignity and worth, regardless of a diagnosis or disability, this case is a sober reminder of what’s really at stake with IVF and surrogacy. 

It is also a reminder that while contracts might establish legal rights, or attempt to treat children as property, they cannot erase the humanity of a baby. 

The consequences of commercial surrogacy and IVF can literally mean life or death for preborn babies. 

It’s time for all Americans of good will to think clearly and carefully about the negative impacts of commercial surrogacy and IVF. Babies are not products. Parenthood isn’t just a contractual relationship. And the value of human life should never depend on age, location, ability, or dependency. 

The Daily Citizen will continue to follow this developing story.

Related articles and resources:

Perspectives on Surrogate Motherhood

What Does The Bible Say About Surrogacy?

Photo from Live Action.

Guy Benson: Can We Celebrate His Baby News?

Guy Benson, a Fox News political analyst, recently announced he and his “husband,” Adam Wise, are bringing home a newborn baby girl to join the boy they acquired through surrogacy in 2023.

Benson’s celebratory Instagram post shows him and Wise bottle-feeding the newborn, each of them doing so on a hospital bed. The first child, Conrad, was acquired through the two men hiring a surrogate. It is assumed this second child was created and born the same way.

Because neither man is interested in women or motherhood, they had to hire a womb to get the babies they desired. They also paid the child’s mother to relinquish her natural maternal rights. There is no glossing over that blunt fact.

This means both children are being intentionally denied their natural mothers, assuming the biological and gestational mothers are two different women, which they likely are. That is how messed up things get when we redefine what family and parentage are because of the legality of same-sex marriage. Same-sex relationships are human cul-de-sacs. That is not a judgement. It is a fact. They don’t lead anywhere humanly by themselves. They are naturally sterile, non-life-producing.

So, when two (or three+) men want babies, they must go knocking at the door of heterosexuality to obtain the necessary eggs and wombs from women. They pay the woman to relinquish her natural maternal rights to her own child. This is what Guy Benson and Adam Wise did. Lesbians must do the same, further obliterating the importance of fatherhood.

As a result, the children born to such arrangements lose their natural mother or father.  All because some adults want kids in wholly unnatural and problematic ways. Intentionally creating children to deny them their natural mother and father is never ethical. It is never loving. It is never progressive, but regressive. It can never be celebrated or congratulated. Yet, it is now increasingly done to satisfy adult wishes.

This is why no one should ever congratulate any family form that mechanically manufactures children and separates them from the father or mother whose DNA they came from and share. The adults deeply desire a biological connection to their child and spend a small fortune to create that. Yet, they casually deny their child the same. They say biology doesn’t matter … until it does.

Benson, in his announcing Instagram post this week, said, 

She’s here, and she’s perfect. We are blessed and overjoyed to welcome Madison Halsey into the world and into our family. Our hearts are filled to the brim. A baby girl. We are just so thankful.

No doubt she is perfect. All life is worth celebrating. 

But not all human configurations are worthy of the same celebration. Madison is perfect, but she will grow up without a mother. There is nothing “perfect” about that. And she will because two men want it that way. The word for that is “selfish.”

Madison will have no mother to bond with in that special, wholly unique motherly way. Guy can’t do that. Adam cannot. All of the love, care and material resources in the world cannot make either of them a mother. Grandma won’t be able to fully fill that role. Madison is a girl, and she will always wonder who her female parent is. Why? Because seeing one’s similar and distinct image in one’s mother and father is literally one of the most natural human developmental experiences in the world. Benson and Wise have taken that away from Madison and that is nothing to congratulate.

The legalization of same-sex marriage by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2015 created this by radically redefining the family and parentage. The legal innovation of Obergefell v. Hodges de-sexed the family by removing the essential quality of male or female. If the Benson-Wise “family” is just as laudable as the natural male-female family, then the feminine in humanity simply becomes optional, merely preferential like vanilla or chocolate ice cream. It also says designing intentionally motherless and fatherless children is something to celebrate.

Do not miss that the argument for same-sex “marriage” created the de-sexed “same-sex family.” Both are human impossibilities and violations of what it means to be human.

No amount of congratulatory happy talk can mask this fact: Madison is denied her mother because two wealthy men want it that way.

South Dakota Makes Fertility Fraud a Felony

South Dakota legislators passed a bill last week criminalizing fertility fraud.

Fertility fraud, or medical rape, occurs when a fertility doctor secretly replaces the intended father’s sperm with his own or that of another donor’s. South Dakota’s HB 1164 makes fertility fraud a felony and creates a way for victims — including children conceived through fraud and men who involuntarily father children — to sue perpetrators.

The South Dakota House and Senate passed HB 1164 in unanimous votes before Governor Larry Rhoden signed the bill into law on March 10.

Fertility fraud doesn’t just constitute medical rape. It deprives parents of their right to raise their biological children and, conversely, children of their right to be known and loved by their biological parents.

But most American states remain poorly equipped to deal with this and the myriad other ethical problems created by modern fertility technologies. According to the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, more than two-thirds of states still have no legislation explicitly criminalizing fertility fraud.

Indiana became the first state to make fertility fraud illegal in 2019, following the trial of former Indiana fertility doctor Donald Cline.

Cline fathered more than 90 children through medical rape during the 1970’s and 80’s. One of Cline’s sons began unraveling the mystery after an at home DNA test showed he was not related to the man he believed to be his biological father.

Netflix documented Cline’s children’s search for justice in the 2022 documentary Our Father.

When Cline went to trial in 2017, Indiana had no law classifying his conduct as a crime. He pled guilty to felony obstruction of justice and paid a $500 fine.

“The charge silenced [Cline’s victims] when it came to their ability to describe the underlying harm to the court,” Jody Madeira, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law and one of the experts who testified against Cline, told Netflix’s Tudum.

“The entire narrative got changed,” Madeira expanded. “It became about Cline lying to the state of Indiana and not about these illicit inseminations, not about the medical rape, not about the harm [and] not about the identity issues.”

Identity issues lie at the heart of all ethical problems arising from the rapid, unregulated expansion of fertility technologies.

The biological ties between parents and children are practically and spiritually crucial to a child’s development and identity formation. That’s why Focus on the Family believes children have the right to be raised by their biological mother and father.

While adoption redeems broken relationships between parents and children, surrogacy intentionally separates children from one or more of their biological parents. Babies conceived through in vitro fertilization frequently suffer the same foundational trauma.

“By making fertility fraud a felony, South Dakota affirms a simple truth: a child’s biological identity isn’t anecdotal or interchangeable,” child advocacy organization Them Before Us noted on X.

“Parentage is critical to a child’s humanity and rights; thus, their genetic origins deserve legal protections.”

The Daily Citizen thanks South Dakota legislators for protecting women’s, parents’ and children’s rights by criminalizing fertility fraud. But children and families still need comprehensive, nation-wide protections from unregulated fertility technologies.

Until all states prioritize children’s rights over adults’ desire for children, crimes and abuses like fertility fraud will continue to occur.

Additional Articles and Resources

Florida to Regulate Surrogacy After Pennsylvania Sex Offender Purchases Baby

Male ‘Throuple’ Buys Toddler from Quebec Government

President Trump Acts to Expand Access to IVF

Why Adoption is Beautiful and Surrogacy Isn’t

Florida to Regulate Surrogacy After Pennsylvania Sex Offender Purchases Baby

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier pledged last week to introduce a state-level bill regulating surrogacy.

The Protecting Kids from Predators Pursuing Parenthood Act would prevent registered sex offenders and people convicted of animal abuse from obtaining a child via surrogacy, the Attorney General explained in a short video posted to X.

He plans to introduce the bill in Florida’s 2026 legislative session.

Uthmeier’s announcement comes amid America’s reckoning with the laughable permissibility of surrogacy laws.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the nation learned a Pennsylvania sex offender purchased a child through gestational surrogacy — a surrogacy contract in which at least one of the parties is biologically related to the child being purchased.

Brandon Keith Mitchell was convicted of felony child porn possession and corruption of a minor in 2016 after he sexually abused a 16-year-old; the boy was a student at the high school where Mitchell taught chemistry.

Mitchell served only two months of his two-year prison sentence. His parole conditions required he register as a sex offender, surrender his teaching license and refrain from unsupervised contact with minor children.

But Mitchell and his partner, a man named Logan Riley, had no problem gaining full parental rights over a newborn in 2023 via a gestational surrogacy contract.

Tim Barker, the District Attorney of York County, Pennsylvania, where Mitchell and Riley live, told Newsweek the pair took advantage of a massive loophole in state laws governing surrogacy contracts.

“Pennsylvania law currently does not, in and of itself, prohibit a registered sex offender from becoming a parent through surrogacy,” he explained.

This means the baby cannot be removed from Mitchell’s care based on his prior convictions. What’s more, Pennsylvania recognizes Mitchell as the child’s parent, making it considerably harder for state actors to intervene.

This loophole is not unique to Pennsylvania. In Florida, the only pre-requisite to entering a gestational surrogacy contract — an agreement to grow and purchase a child — is that all parties be at least 18 years old.

Meanwhile, state governments from sea to shining sea are denying Christians’ adoption applications because they do not believe in affirming a child’s sexual identity confusion.

Lack of surrogacy regulation in states like Florida and Pennsylvania reflect our culture’s mistaken conception of surrogacy: That it’s a pro-family technology helping couples struggling with infertility to have biological children.

Even in the best circumstances — when a married couple create an embryo and use another woman to carry that baby to term — surrogacy is not pro-family. It breaks the bond between a baby and the mother who grew them for nine months.

Focus on the Family’s position statement on surrogacy asks whether “we fully understand the implications of turning conception and childbearing into services for hire,” continuing:

What about the child? Who does she belong to, really? (We’re not talking about legality, here–but spiritually, morally and emotionally.) Does surrogacy make the child a commodity.

Child advocate Katy Faust expands on the consequences of surrogacy for children in World :

Surrogacy is, in 100 percent of cases, the violation of children’s rights — namely, every child’s right to his or her mother.

Maternal separation is a major physiological stressor for the infant, and studies have found that even brief maternal deprivation can permanently alter the structure of the infant brain.

But that aside, the ethical nature of a scientific technology cannot be determined by its best use-case alone. Surrogacy is rife with potential for abuse. Offenders like Mitchell are already taking advantage.

Focus on the Family and the Daily Citizen believe all surrogacy — contractual and altruistic — is morally wrong. In the absence of a total prohibition, we support laws tightening restrictions on surrogacy and protecting children born into these ethically compromised situations.

Additional Articles and Resources

Focus on the Family’s Position Statement on Surrogacy

Baby Should Be Immediately Removed from Convicted Child Predator

Court Frees Christian mom to Adopt, Stop Oregon’s Gender Ideology Adoption Mandate

Massachusetts DCF Denied a Catholic Couple’s Foster Care License — Now, They’re Being Sued For Religious Discrimination

When Government is Hostile to Christian Foster Parents

Maternal Health is Declining Because We Are Ignoring Mothering

Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage Harms Children and Society

Chip and Joanna Gaines Platform Couple to ‘Normalize Same-Sex Families’