WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden, his wife Jill and members of Congress carefully choose guests for the annual State of the Union speech, with an eye to political causes he will highlight in his speech.
The guests sit in the upper balcony of the House of Representatives chamber where Biden will give his speech on Thursday night. Often, the president will welcome some of them by name.
The invitees this year include people whose lives were changed by IVF or abortion restrictions, family members of high-profile overseas prisoners, union members, and a veteran of the 1965 Bloody Sunday attack on Black civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama:
ELIZABETH CARR: The first baby born from in vitro fertilization in the United States, Carr, 42, comes as the guest of Virginia's Democratic Senator Tim Kaine.
KATE COX: Cox is a Dallas-area woman who sued for the right to terminate a nonviable pregnancy that endangered her health after Texas passed a law banning abortion. She will be a guest of first lady Jill Biden, the White House said.
SHAWN FAIN: Fain, of Detroit, is president of the United Auto Workers union, which led a successful strike last year to boost worker pay and benefits. Biden visited a strike picket line, the first U.S. president to do so. Fain was invited by the first lady.
BETTIE MAE FIKES: Fikes, of Selma, Alabama, is a singer and civil rights activist known as a "Bloody Sunday Foot Soldier" from the 1965 attack by Alabama police on hundreds of civil rights activists crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge. She is a guest of the first lady.
SWEDISH PRIME MINISTER ULF KRISTERSSON: Kristersson helped lead Sweden in its campaign to join the NATO alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine. Sweden became NATO's 32nd member when Kristersson handed over the formal documentation in Washington on Thursday. He is a guest of the first lady.
ELLA MILMAN, MIKHAIL GERSHKOVICH: The parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who is being detained in a Moscow prison, will come as the guest of House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Republican from Louisiana.
ORNA AND DANIEL NEUTRA: The mother and brother of American hostage Omer Neutra, being held by Hamas since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by the militant Islamist group, will come as guests of Democratic Representative Mike Lawler and the House speaker.
GABRIEL SHIPTON: Shipton, the brother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who the U.S. is trying to extradite for publishing classified documents, will be the guest of Republican Representative Thomas Massie.
NOT ATTENDING: Ukraine's first lady, Olena Zelenska, and the wife of the late Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, Yulia Navalnaya, were both asked to attend the speech by the White House but declined the invitation.