McKenna West’s Legal Battle Over Surrogate Baby Intensifies

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
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**Brendon Geoffrion** (0:35)
Hey, welcome to The TMZ Podcast. I'm Branson Cork.

**Courtney** (0:38)
Oh, I'm Courtney.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:39)
You've got to say your name.

**Courtney** (0:40)
I know I never usually have to.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (0:42)
Why not?

**Courtney** (0:43)
I don't know. Didn't you say it for me yesterday too?

**Brendon Geoffrion** (0:46)
You know what?

**Courtney** (0:47)
Yeah.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (0:47)
I think it's actually very selfish if I don't let you say your name. Because it's like, oh, I'm going to talk, I'm going to say everything. I'm not going to let Courtney speak. I don't feel that way.

**Courtney** (0:55)
You can say my name.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (0:57)
Yeah, I get it. All right. No worries.

**Courtney** (0:59)
Like, what's that song? Say My Name? Is that Destiny's Child? Yes.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (1:03)
You're going way back to me. I was before I was born.

**Courtney** (1:06)
It's Destiny's Child. It's just a good song that you should know.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (1:09)
Anyways, we have a variety of stories to talk about today.
This surrogate war, battle, whatever you want to call it, has just exploded. It's a custody battle. I'll be honest. I'm just going to be honest. Courtney had to explain this to me like a five-year-old.

**Courtney** (1:24)
Oh, yeah, you don't do deep teasers.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (1:26)
I don't do deep teasers.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:27)
No, I forgot about that.

**Courtney** (1:28)
Everyone has their own different vibe, yes, with what we're doing. Have you guys talked about the surrogate story at all on the PM podcast or anything?

**SPEAKER_4** (1:35)
No, not at all.

**Courtney** (1:36)
All right, so I'll give a little background. This California couple obviously has a surrogate, McKenna West. The baby, when it was about 20 weeks old, they went to the doctor's. It was diagnosed with HLHS, and it's a diagnosis where the left part of the heart doesn't completely form, so it has to have three surgeries. The parents then, when they found that out, wanted to abort the fetus. The surrogate, however, did not, so she went to Texas to actually give birth to the baby. And under Texas law, if you give birth to a child, you are the mother. Whether you are the biological mom, whatever, you are the mom. The parents want their kid. They are, they actually have custody of the kid. McKenna gave birth on August 12th.
McKenna gave birth to it. The parents now have the kid. McKenna is trying to fight it and saying that she will take this all the way to the Supreme Court if she does not win in the lower states. But the parents are like, it's our kid. The kid is going to have the surgery. It's either scheduled to get it today or sometime next week.
But they were like, no, this is our child. You have nothing to do with it. They actually filed a restraining order on her and she has to appear in court on August 25th. But they were like, this isn't our contract. You're not the parents. You're not this. And you fled to another state with our child. And it is every parent's worst nightmare in a surrogate situation. And you feel horrible for the parents.
And I understand it because McKenna is like, they wanted to abort the baby. The baby wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. I'm the one who gave birth to it. So it should be mine.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (3:11)
Literally, the agreement included a provision allowing the intended parents to request termination of the pregnancy if a fetal anomaly was discovered, which is exactly what happened. So McKenna West was 100% in violation of her own contract.

**Courtney** (3:24)
Because it's a very rare condition, what the baby got diagnosed with. But it sounds like they didn't want the baby to go through three surgeries after.

**Brendon Geoffrion** (3:30)
It sounds like there's just a major hole in this contract to the point of like they didn't think about this being a problem, of fleeing to another state like Texas where this could happen. So there may not be a protection in the original California contract that protects somebody to go to another state where it's basically like a screw you.