First & Fourteenth Represents Alaska Surrogate Mother Suing After the Couple Who Hired Her Demanded She Abort the Child

First & Fourteenth represents McKenna West, an Alaska surrogate mother suing after the couple who hired her demanded she abort the child they asked her to carry.

West, a nurse and single mother, agreed to carry a child for a California couple. After a 20-week scan showed a serious, but treatable, heart condition, the couple invoked the contract’s forced abortion clause, and she was threatened with over $250,000 in liability when she refused.

Lincoln Wilson, a First & Fourteenth partner, said the case “illustrates how an industry that claims to empower women can treat them — and the children they are carrying — as mere property.”

In Alaska Superior Court, West argued that the abortion clause violates her privacy rights under the Alaska Constitution. No Alaska hospital can perform the surgery her son needs, so she relocated to Dallas to deliver him there. She continues to fight in the courts for the ability to make the decision to give him that life-saving care ahead of his expected birth in September.

First & Fourteenth attorneys Lincoln Davis Wilson, Rob Bucknam, and James Compton are representing West in this matter, along with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, Kyle Bevan of Call & Jensen, and Tim Kowal of the Kowal Law Group, APC.