Just days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered “children,” President Biden held a fundraiser at the Silicon Valley home of a prominent stem cell research advocate, warning that voting by Donald Trump would limit reproductive rights beyond abortion.
“Trump and his MAGA friends are determined to take away your fundamental freedoms,” Biden said at a small event Thursday held at the home of real estate developers Bob Klein and Danielle Guttman Klein.
Klein was the leader of Proposition 71, a California ballot measure approved by voters in 2004 that guaranteed state funding for stem cell research to support medical discoveries and disease cures. The move came after former Republican President George W. Bush limited federal funding for research amid ethical concerns from religious conservatives about the destruction of human embryos that supply the cells.
Biden's visit to Klein's home in the affluent city of Los Altos Hills comes as the Alabama court decision has halted in vitro fertilization treatments, known as IVF, leaving some patients there who hoped to conceive children through the procedure in difficulties. The practice involves combining sperm and eggs in a laboratory to create embryos and implant them in a uterus.
The Alabama court's decision, which said those who destroy frozen embryos can be held liable for wrongful death, has raised new concerns about access to reproductive health care amid uncertainty over abortion after the 2022 decision by the United States Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that protected abortion rights nationwide.
The issue has reignited partisan ethical debates over the medical uses of stem cells, with Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley saying this week that she believes “embryos are babies.”
At Thursday's event, Biden doubled down on his promise to veto any national abortion ban proposed by Congress and said that if he is re-elected (and Democrats gain control of Congress in November), his administration can undo far-reaching rollbacks of reproductive rights.
“I promise you that we will fully restore Roe v. Wade,” Biden said to applause.
When Vice President Kamala Harris visited San Jose last month, she also highlighted the need for voters to put Democrats in charge to prevent a national abortion ban.
Trump has taken credit for overturning Roe v. Wade, made possible by his appointment to the high court, and the New York Times reported this week that, if he is elected, he plans to go even further, targeting access to the abortion pill.
“All of these rights and all of this progress are at real risk of being lost if Joe Biden is not re-elected,” Klein said Thursday, pointing to IVF, abortion, cancer research and advances in lowering the cost of prescriptions that they save lives.
Steve Westley, the former California state controller who ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Democrat in 2006, also co-hosted the Bay Area event, held in a secluded residential area near Santa Clara, where horses and donkeys roamed around. the neighbors' yards.
Tickets for the event cost between $6,600 and $100,000. Among those in attendance were Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, and television journalist Katie Couric, an advocate for pancreatic cancer research.
Biden, who has been in California since Tuesday and stopped at fundraising events in Los Angeles and San Francisco, was headed back to the White House on Thursday, where state leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, were awaiting his arrival for the National Governors Association meeting. winter meeting.
Nodding to criticism about his ability to serve another term at his age, Biden, 81, shared a common refrain on the campaign trail to compare him to the alternative, not “the almighty.”
“I'm not every president's gift, but I'm sure I'm better than the last one.”
