by Monica Showalter
When do babies lose their value as human beings and become consumer durables, subject to product liability considerations?
When surrogacy is the story, which is what happened in Alaska, where a surrogate mother was told that the child she was bearing for a California-based couple wasn't good enough, given that he had a treatable heart condition, so as the contract said, she'd need to abort it out and throw it away with the medical waste.
She refused.
And she went to just the right haven for expectant mothers under such impossible duress to stay by her baby, the great state of Texas.
Attorney General Ken Paxton stepped in and issued an order to protect the baby, which was consistent with Texas state law, where the wishes and rights of the surrogate mother supercede any contract.
According to the New York Post:
The surrogate who refused to abort her baby despite the wishes of the boy’s biological parents gave birth early on Wednesday.
McKenna West has been caught up in a contentious multi-state controversy over parental rights and abortion after the unborn child she was carrying was diagnosed with a severe but treatable heart condition.
West, who was set to give birth on Sept. 2, delivered the newborn baby she named Gabriel in the Dallas area on Wednesday, her attorney Lincoln Wilson told The Dallas Morning News.
Gabriel will now undergo life-saving care for his congenital heart condition, Wilson said.
However, due to a court order, West is not allowed to see or hold the baby.
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Paxton secured this order from a Texas judge:
Which was as courage and noble an act as any we have seen from him. He saved a baby's life, allowing the child to be born, grow up, and surprise everyone with what he can do despite his likely handicaps.
It's absolutely outrageous that this problem came up at all. It baffles me that the egg-and-sperm donor parents insisted on killing their own child, instead of just letting him go, letting the surrogate keep him or putting him up for adoption.
But that's the sorry state of the world we live in.
Yes, the child would probably be handicapped. Children with his condition, called hypoplastic left heart syndrome, where one side of the heart is underdeveloped, are often slow to develop and tire easily, and if they live through the reparative surgery (75 percent do, 25 percent don't), usually only live to age 40, according to Wikipedia.
But that is no reason to kill the child for having the condition. Medical advances are happening every day and there is going to come a day where the children can be completely repaired and live full normal lives.
In Massachusetts, ghoulish celebrations are happening around this:
The mother fled from Alaska to Texas, which was a significant act of courage of her own, and presented Paxton with a Solomonic dilemma: To determine who the real mother was. That Paxton could recognize the mother's willingness to risk scrapping her contract to save the life of the baby she was carrying told him, and everyone else, who the real mother was, and that Texas law had it right all along to accomodate her. All it took was courage and leadership, and Paxton was up the job.
Paxton clearly recognized the baby's humanity, that the baby was a real person. I love the way Paxton's note emphasizes that the baby has an identity, which among other things, Paxton names as 'a Texan.' That's no small matter in Texas, and Paxton bestowed the baby with the state's greatest honor. The baby is a Texan indeed, and now that he is born, is not to be messed with.
Thank you, Ken Paxton. Wish I could send you my vote.
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