Her name is McKenna West. She's a nurse from Alaska with two kids of her own. Back in the spring, doctors found something wrong with the baby she never intended to raise.

West was a gestational surrogate for a California couple, Nausheen Gilkar and Omar Ahmed. Twenty weeks into the pregnancy, doctors diagnosed the baby with hypoplastic left heart syndrome — HLHS — a serious heart defect.

It's treatable, but left alone, it kills a baby within days or weeks of birth.

Gilkar and Ahmed decided they wanted West to terminate the pregnancy instead of treating the baby. West agreed at first. She even made the appointment.

Then, thankfully, she changed her mind.

She refused the abortion. She then cut off contact with the “intended parents.” She left Alaska and moved to Texas — a state where the law was going to protect the baby.

Live Action, a pro-life group out of Virginia, paid for her and her two kids to make that trip. From there, she fought to be recognized as the child's mother, with the authority to get him the medical care he needed.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also stepped in. He secured a court order requiring the hospital to give the baby life-saving treatment. His office said it used every tool available to make sure baby Gabriel — that's what West named him — got the care he needed.

Gabriel was born August 12th. He's had the first of what will be three surgeries. His condition is still critical, and the road in front of him is long.

Gabriel is now in the legal custody of the two people who wanted him dead. A restraining order keeps West — the woman who carried him, who fought for him, and who refused to kill him — from even seeing him at all.

They've also renamed him. Gabriel is the name West gave him. Gilkar and Ahmed have put Rumi on the birth certificate, and they've gone to court to stop West from calling him anything else.

And they want their money back. In a countersuit filed before he was even born, and made public this week, they're seeking more than $100,000 from West — breach of the surrogacy agreement, plus emotional distress from what their filing calls “malicious, outrageous conduct.” They had paid her $60,000 during the pregnancy under a contract that included termination provisions.

They are suing her for the cost of not aborting him.

I believe in the sanctity of life. And while I could certainly be defined as pro-life, the truth is I'm an abortion abolitionist. I think abortion should be illegal in this country, full stop.

I understand the hard cases — rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I take those seriously. But I also believe encouraging a woman to kill her unborn child doesn’t take away any of the trauma for those horrific situations. In fact, it adds to it — dramatically.

Furthermore, saving the life of the mother never requires killing the baby. The baby might need to be delivered in order to keep mom safe — and if that’s what needs to be done, it should be done. But doctors should try to save both mom and baby.

Still, this wasn't one of those exceptions. This is a baby with a treatable condition, and two adults who decided that was reason enough to end his life before he ever had a chance to fight for it.

McKenna West didn't have to make that stand. She was a gestational carrier — no genetic tie or legal claim to the baby. She could have kept the appointment, aborted the baby, and gone back to her own life in Alaska.

Or perhaps she understood she really couldn’t do that.

Whatever the case, she crossed state lines to protect a child who wasn't legally or genetically hers — but one she faithfully carried in her womb for effectively the full term of a pregnancy.

McKenna West is courageous — and she needs to be commended, my friends.

Baby Gabriel is alive today because one woman refused to do something evil to another human being living inside her body.

Of course, if you listen to the left, they'll tell you Baby Gabriel was her body, and therefore her choice.

I wonder if they'll be celebrating her decision to choose life.

Conservative, not bitter.
Todd

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AP — the fullest account of how West got to Texas, including Live Action paying to fly her and her two children there.

Fox News — Attorney General Ken Paxton's own account of stepping in to secure baby Gabriel's care.

CBS News — the fuller legal timeline: the Alaska ruling on West's own medical authority, the guardian ad litem, and the August 25th hearing still to come.

KERA News — Paxton has now withdrawn from the case, saying his objective was achieved, while the restraining order stays in effect.

Fox News — the countersuit: more than $100,000 sought from West for breach of the surrogacy agreement, against the $60,000 they had already paid her.

Ask most people what socialism means, and they'll tell you it's having a fire department, a police department, and public roads.

But that's not what socialism actually is. Socialism is when the means of production — the land, the factories, the tools, the capital — are owned collectively. In other words, the state owns them, or "the people" do.

Push it far enough and socialism comes for all private property. And the truth is, it always ends up being pushed here because there is no end to the things socialists believe belong to them.

Capitalism recognizes your right to own private property — and whatever you produce. You trade it at a price both parties agree to, with the absolute minimum amount of government interference possible.

The real disagreement isn't about fire departments. It's about ownership. It's about consent. It's about force. And it's about liberty, my friends.

Who owns what you produce? Genesis 1 tells us God created the heavens and the earth. In fact, it's the very first thing we learn about Him in the Scriptures.

We're made in His image, so we create too. And what we create is rightfully placed under our stewardship.

That's why you can sell your labor to an employer, start a business, or negotiate a price with someone else — without the government involved.

The socialist mindset starts somewhere else entirely. What you produce isn't exclusively yours. If a majority — fifty percent plus one — decides you have more than you need, they can take it. Through taxes, penalties, regulation, reparations — you name it.

The late, great Walter Williams used to make this point, and it's still one of the best ways I know how to say it. If I put my hand in your back pocket and take your wallet, that's theft.

And if you get a majority of people to vote and empower the government to do the same exact thing, it doesn't stop being theft. A majority vote doesn't change the underlying nature of the act itself.

All democracy means in that context is that you've convinced enough people that stealing is acceptable — or maybe even good.

Our Founders talked about liberty — about people living in accordance with unalienable rights: life, liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness. Not about a majority voting away what belongs to you.

That question — who owns what you produce — is going to show up on your ballot this November, whether the candidates say the word "socialism" out loud or not.

This is the moment from today's show where I outlined the McKenna West case — a surrogate who refused to abort a baby with a treatable heart defect, then crossed state lines to protect him.

Follow us on Facebook, and share it if you think more people need to hear this story.

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Quick reminder before I go: I'm out next week on a family trip with my brother and sister-in-law. It should make for a great week. And who knows? Maybe I’ll include some pictures here while we’re out.

Krish Dhanam and Gary Varvel will fill-in behind the mic while I'm gone.

And The Inner Circle will still land in your inbox each day.

Listen to today's full episode
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