Family · Dallas-Fort Worth, TX Metro · August 27, 2026
Dallas Surrogate Refuses Abortion, Sparks Custody Fight Over Baby's Life
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 13
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
A private custody suit has been reduced to two named, frozen figures — the surrogate "McKenna West" and the biological mother "Naushin Gilkar" — each held up by a different side as the face of the whole abortion argument, down to a fight over what to call the baby. The Texas attorney general publicly adopted the name "Baby Gabriel" in a statement, and West has fundraised publicly around the case; both moves take an individual out of a courtroom and into a national target frame. The polarizing move is the demand that you decide which woman is the villain before the judge has decided anything.
Counter-Rule 13 · Radical Solidarity
Stand publicly with whoever has been singled out. Isolation is the whole mechanism; refusing it disarms the tactic.
Refuse the villain slot: when the case comes up in your small group or on your feed, say the names of all three people — the surrogate, the intended mother, the infant — and pray for each by name rather than about one of them. Do not share, like, or forward posts that attack either woman personally, and do not give to any fundraiser you cannot verify. If someone in your congregation has been through IVF or surrogacy, sit with them this month; they are the ones who will feel this coverage as a verdict on themselves.
Rule 11
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.”
The facts here are already grave enough that pushing them further is a live temptation: reporting shows the intended mother acknowledged asking for the abortion after the hypoplastic left heart syndrome diagnosis, but also that she denied refusing or intending to refuse care after birth, and the judge has issued no custody ruling at all. A retelling that flattens this into "the parents wanted the baby dead and then denied him treatment" pushes a real negative past what the record supports. One overclaim like that, corrected in public, discredits every true thing said afterward.
Counter-Rule 11 · Proportional Truth
Refuse to overclaim, even where it would help. One exaggeration hands the other side the only weapon that works permanently.
Keep a short written list of what is actually established — the diagnosis, the August birth, the restraining order, the birth-certificate name ruling, no custody decision yet — and say only those things out loud. When you do not know whether the intended parents planned to withhold surgery, say "the court has not found that." If your pastor or newsletter editor is going to mention the case, offer them that list before it is printed.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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