McKenna West's Legal Battle Over Surrogate Baby Intensifies | The TMZ Podcast

Hey, welcome to the TMZ podcast. I'm Branson Quirk. Oh, I'm Courtney. Sorry. I know. I never usually have to. Why not? I don't know. Didn't you say it for me yesterday, too? You know, you know what? Yeah, I think it's actually very selfish if I don't let you say your name. Why? Well, 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. You can say my name. Yeah, I get it. All right. No worries. Like what's that song? Say my name. Is that Destiny's Child? Yes. You're going way back to me. That was before I was born. It's Destiny's Child. It's just a good song that you should know. 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. I did. Oh, yeah. You don't do deep teasers. I don't do deep teasers. No, I forgot about that. 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? No, not at all. All right, so I'll give a little background. Go for it. This California couple obviously has a surrogate, McKenna West. The baby, when it was like about 20 weeks old, they went to the doctors. 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. 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 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. You fled to another state with our child. It is every parent's worst nightmare in a surrogate situation. You feel horrible for the parents. 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. 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. McKenna West was 100% in violation of her own contract. It's a very rare condition, what the baby got diagnosed with. They didn't want the baby to go through three surgeries after. It sounds like there's just a major hole in this contract to the point of they didn't think about this being a problem of fleeing to another state like Texas where this could happen. There may not be a protection in the original California contract that protects somebody to go to another state. That would be a huge oversight if that wasn't because you have to know that in other states that there are the pro-life states and that is going to be a thing. I don't know what will happen. The parents are clearly always going to feel terrible about this because it's all over. When the baby grows up, it will know about everything. It's their kid. At some point, you have to just hand the kid over and stop fighting with the parents. They're already going through enough. Then to take the baby back, it's crazy. The fact that she wants to take it all the way to the Supreme Court is wild. Here's an idea. This might sound insensitive. Go have another baby. Who? McKenna. She wants this baby back. Call it even. Just be like, you know what? Too much legal stuff. You know how expensive it would be to fight this? Can you imagine? She's saying the baby wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. I'm the one that made the decision to still have the baby. Time heals everything. Give it a few months and then have another baby. I don't know. Some of these surrogate cases, this isn't a very rare occurrence. This happens all the time. That's what every parent's worst nightmare is. These parents, they can't have a kid. That's why they had to go this route. It's like, cut the losses. I don't understand. I get it. She's attached to this. That's why I'm not a fan of surrogacy. What if it's the only way to have a kid like it was for this family? I get it. If it works for you, it works for you. Personally, I don't think I could do that. Would you adopt? If I'm having a baby and I'm growing a baby inside of me, that's chemically going to attach you to the child. I don't think it's a natural thing to do to depart from something that you grew in your body. A lot of people do it and it works out. Do you make a lot of money doing that? You don't make that much money. Every contract is different. We've had someone in the office here that used a surrogate because they couldn't have their kid naturally. It does work. Tony, look up the average surrogate payment. I would say probably $60,000 to $80,000. They'll pay for flights if they live in a different state. I don't think it's that much. A lot of people want to do it because they want to help out families. I feel like I'm the worst person to talk about this. I'm just a dude that's so disconnected. Would you adopt if you and your partner couldn't have a kid? I just wouldn't have a kid. No? I'll be real and this is going to sound also insensitive. I want my kid to look like another version of me. I want to see a little me running around. It's like I'm connected to him. Do we want another little you running around? I don't think so. You definitely know. With all of your thoughts, I know. If I did have a kid, he'd be running around the TMZ office all day. No. For how much surrogates get paid, the responses online vary. It's a lot for some and then it's a little bit. Yeah, it all just depends. A quick AI overview says $70,000 to $110,000. I said $80,000. I'd do it for a million. No, you're doing it because you're helping. Gosh, a pregnancy is a lot. It is a lot. I'm the guy. I know. The whole thing before even you're carrying the baby and paying the surrogate costs a lot of money, IVF and creating embryos. It's a lot. It's a lot of stress. These parents' kids, their baby's about to go into surgery and they don't need this extra stress. I understand it, that the baby wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her, but the parents decided that they want to keep the baby. They are giving it the surgery. Just let them move on with their life and you move on with yours. I need to take a class on all this stuff like embryos and eggs. I don't understand any of it. I think eggs, I'm like, that's what I'm cooking in the morning for breakfast. Well, be careful because there's a huge recall on eggs. Oh, really? I just bought a 12-pack. Be careful. It's up to a class one. The FDA just moved it up to a class one. What's the problem? Salmonella in eggs, but it's a really bad one. Salmonella problem? Yeah. Oh. No, it's a class one though. That's super dangerous. Oh. Well, I bought a 12-pack and I haven't woken up early enough to cook them. I think we're good. Okay. But this weekend, it's about to be Saturday. I know. I don't eat breakfast though. I sleep. Then why do you have eggs if you don't eat breakfast? Does that make any sense? You got me in a corner here. You got me in a corner here. What are you doing with these eggs? They're just sitting in my thing, in my fridge right now. I thought it'd be a good idea to have, but anyways, we got to move. We do have to move. There's a TV show to be filmed. Yes. Matthew McConaughey. Yeah. Good guy. This was a very fun clip. He talks about his little stent when he tried to cross the border and he got pulled over by the cops. What border? The Mexico border. Okay. Yes. Quiet. Wedding planner got me out of a major, major mess up in Mexico one time. Give it to me before we go. I'm pulled in one late night and I'm crossing the border going way down south and I get pulled over and it's one of those pullovers where they noticed me, gringo in the truck, nice truck. This is that dress down and I'm like, oh geez, get the wallet out. Here we go. And it was going down and then I brought up, you guys know Jennifer Lopez? I'm like, and I was like, ever see Wedding Planner? Like, and I was like, huh? Huh? Yeah, it was me. Like, oh, what the? And they went off and we ended up taking pictures together and they let me go. Well, in breaking news environments, people have to leave and break the news. So we have to go, unfortunately, and break some news and film a TV show. You guys will be back in the afternoon. But you saw this clip, but we'll talk about this more later in the afternoon and everything. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Courtney. Yes. See you guys here on Monday. Have a good week.