In Bay Area, Biden vows to restore abortion access amid legal uncertainty about fertility treatments

President Biden at a library in Culver City earlier this week.

Feb. 22, 2024 7:35 PM PT

LOS ALTOS — Just days after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos can be considered “children,” President Biden held a fundraiser at a leading stem cell research advocate’s Silicon Valley home, warning that voting for 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 on 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 ensured state funding for stem cell research to support medical discoveries and cures to diseases. The measure came after former Republican President George W. Bush had limited federal funding for the 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 town of Los Altos Hills comes as the Alabama court decision has stalled in vitro fertilization treatments, known as IVF, leaving some patients there who had hoped to conceive children through the procedure scrambling. The practice involves combining sperm and eggs in a lab to create embryos and implanting them in a uterus.

The Alabama court decision — which said those who destroy frozen embryos can be held liable for wrongful death — has sparked new concerns about reproductive health access amid abortion uncertainty after the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the historic decision that protected abortion rights nationwide.

The issue has reignited partisan ethical debates over the medical uses of stem cells, with Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley saying this week that she believes that “embryos are babies.”

At Thursday’s event, Biden doubled down on his promise to veto any national abortion ban proposed by Congress and said if he is reelected — and Democrats gain congressional control in November — his administration can undo the far-reaching rollbacks of reproductive rights.

“I promise you we will fully restore Roe v. Wade,” Biden said to applause.

When Vice President Kamala Harris visited San Jose last month, she also hammered the need for voters to put Democrats in charge to avoid a national abortion ban.

Trump has taken credit for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, made possible by his appointments to the high court, and the New York Times reported this week that if he is elected, he plans to take that even further, targeting abortion pill access.

“All of these rights and all of this progress is at a real risk of loss if Joe Biden is not reelected,” Klein said Thursday, pointing to IVF, abortion, cancer research and progress on decreasing the cost of lifesaving prescriptions.

Steve Westley, the former state controller of California who unsuccessfully ran 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 neighbors’ yards.

Tickets to the event cost between $6,600 and $100,000. Attendees included Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat, and TV journalist Katie Couric, who is an advocate for pancreatic cancer research.

Biden, who has been in California since Tuesday, stopping at fundraisers 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 Assn. winter meeting.

Nodding to criticisms 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 the gift of all presidents but I’m sure as hell better than the last guy.”