US couple and surrogate in court battle for baby

A California couple is engaged in an escalating fight with their surrogate over a newborn with a life-threatening heart defect.

The couple told a Texas court the child's condition had worsened and they were anguished by attempts to deny them parental rights because they had wanted an abortion.

"He's our child," Nausheen Gilkar said, wiping away tears on the witness stand on Tuesday.

"She's unstable," Gilkar said of surrogate McKenna West, who was sitting across from her in the Dallas courtroom.

The hearing offered the fullest public airing to date of a deepening and high-profile dispute over surrogacy and abortion that has rushed right-to-life groups and GOP office holders to the side of West, a nurse who flew from Alaska to have the baby on August 12 in Texas, where most abortions are banned.

Lawyers for West, who has called the child Gabriel, said she is seeking sole conservatorship to make medical decisions for the child.

West told the court that she was 23 weeks pregnant when she made an appointment for an abortion at the couple's urging but was not comfortable with it.

"I knew that this baby, despite the diagnosis, had a great chance at survival and a great chance at leading a long life," West said.

After West gave birth, the couple obtained a restraining order barring her from seeing or holding the child.

The judge did not rule on final custody or conservatorship on Tuesday, and the restraining order was left in effect.

Court documents filed by the couple's lawyer prior to the hearing said Rumi was in critical condition and appeared to be "suffering from potential complications" from a procedure after he was born.

The child has hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a congenital defect in which one side of the organ is underdeveloped, preventing normal blood flow.

Fewer than 1000 newborns each year have the condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Without treatment, death can come within days or weeks.

Gilkar told the court that the baby had no blood flow to the left side of his heart. Since surgery, she said, he has gasped for air, choked on tubes and needed a blood transfusion.