A letter from Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick

Dear neighbor,

Twenty-five years ago, I became the first doctor in the Southwest to prescribe pills for medication abortion. This year, Julie Willoughby voted to make it a crime for a patient to receive that medicine in the mail, and a felony for me to send it.

Let me tell you what that means. This medicine is actually two pills, taken a day or two apart. It has been approved by the FDA and commonly prescribed since 2000. Most of my patients take it at home. That’s what Julie Willoughby voted to make a crime.

My name is Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick. I am a family physician here in Phoenix, and I have spent my career providing abortion care. I opened my own clinic in 1999. I love this work, but I can only do it as well as the laws allow. I am telling you this so that when I describe what our laws do, you know I am not speaking from theory. I have lived it, in that exam room, with real patients.

I am also signing this letter with my real name, and I want to be honest about what that means. At the front desk of my clinic, the glass is bullet-resistant. Across it, in large letters, are the words WE PERSIST. That glass is not decoration. Since 1977, people who do what I do have been the target of 11 murders and 26 attempted murders in this country, along with 42 bombings and hundreds of arsons and assaults. Last year the threats and stalking against providers more than doubled. I carry bear mace in my bag, and I bring my German shepherd to work with me. That is simply what this work requires now. I am telling you my name anyway, because what is happening in our state is worth saying plainly, out loud, by someone willing to stand behind it.

This is not the first time my name and my work have cost me something. More than 10 years ago, a private school sent my family a letter, two pages, three weeks before the school year started, telling us my daughter could no longer attend. The reason was simple. I provide abortion care, and according to the school, that meant she had not followed their moral code. She was 14, a straight-A student on the swim team. A week later, before he had even started, my son was turned away from a different school for the same reason. I know exactly what this kind of advocacy costs. I am signing my name to this letter anyway.

I am writing to ask you for all three of your votes. Vote for Kristie O’Brien for state senate. Vote for Rockee Armstrong and Jacob Weinberg for state house. Don’t vote for Julie Willoughby, Kevin Hartke, or Janet Weninger. Vote on or before November 3.

Let me tell you why, from inside the room where these laws actually land.

Start with Julie Willoughby. Julie Willoughby is an emergency room nurse. She has stood at a bedside on somebody’s worst day and helped them. I know exactly what that room feels like, because I stand in one every day. We took the same kind of oath. But then she went to the Capitol and spent three years voting against the people we both swore to care for.

In 2024, after the state Supreme Court revived a near-total abortion ban with no exception for rape or incest written in 1864 — before Arizona was even a state, before women could vote — the Legislature held a vote to repeal it. Julie Willoughby voted no. She voted to keep the 1864 ban as the law over your body and mine. That single vote is why I am asking you for all three of your votes this election. Vote for Kristie O’Brien for state senate. Vote for Rockee Armstrong and Jacob Weinberg for state house. Vote on or before November 3.

When Arizona voters had their say in November 2024, your neighbors voted for the right to abortion in our state constitution. Not narrowly. Nearly 63% of your neighbors voted yes. More of your neighbors voted for the right to abortion than voted for Julie Willoughby herself when she last ran, in 2024. You would think a nurse would hear that kind of evidence.

She did not. After the voters spoke, Julie Willoughby kept ignoring them and voting the other way. She voted for a bill that reproductive rights groups warned would function as a “gag rule,” preventing providers from talking about abortion care even inside a hospital emergency room, the very room where she once stood at a patient’s bedside. That means a nurse in that ER could be barred from explaining all the options to a patient in the middle of a miscarriage or a dangerous pregnancy complication. She voted to pile new restrictions onto medication abortion, the most common form of abortion care in the state. She voted this year for fetal personhood, the legal theory that a fertilized egg is a person, which doctors and advocates warn lays the groundwork to restrict both IVF and birth control. And she voted to make it a crime to receive abortion medication in the mail. Nearly half of the more than 13,000 Arizonans who ended a pregnancy in 2024 used that medication.

A nurse voted for all of it. I don’t understand it, and have stopped trying to. What I do know is what her voting record does to the people I treat, and I am asking you not to hand her a promotion. Vote for the candidates we know will be champions for our rights. Vote for Kristie O’Brien, Rockee Armstrong, and Jacob Weinberg, on or before November 3.

Neither of her running mates has cast a vote in the legislature yet. But both have already told you what they would do with the chance.

After spending years as the mayor of Chandler, Kevin Hartke wants a ticket to the Capitol to take away the right to abortion your neighbors just voted into our state constitution. He has made it clear that he wants to repeal it, not restrict it, by sending it back to the ballot to be undone. We can’t afford to let him take that trip. Vote for all three instead, Kristie O’Brien, Rockee Armstrong, and Jacob Weinberg. Vote on or before November 3.

Janet Weninger is just as dangerous. She opposes abortion after roughly six weeks, before many people even know they are pregnant. She doesn’t support exceptions for rape or incest. She wants to “defund” Planned Parenthood, where people go for quality, affordable care. She wants an 1873 federal postal law enforced to block abortion medication from being mailed. And she believes embryos created through IVF should have the same legal protections as a person, the same personhood theory that doctors and advocates warn puts both fertility care and birth control at risk. An 1864 ban, an 1873 postal law, a 19th century idea of who counts as a person. That is the future these three are running on.

You already told this state where you stand, loud and clear. Nearly 63% of this district voted for the right to abortion. All I am asking is that you vote the rest of your ballot the same way. Vote for all three. Kristie O’Brien for state senate. Rockee Armstrong and Jacob Weinberg for state house. Vote on or before November 3.

I want to tell you a little about them.

Kristie O’Brien is a Chandler native who went to Dobson High and put down roots to raise her own family in this district. She’s a lawyer and a mediator, someone who spends her days helping families work through their hardest moments and find a way forward. She supports abortion rights, and there is no question where she stands. When I imagine handing the pen to someone who will write the laws that reach onto my exam table, I want it to be a person who already knows what it costs to sit across from someone in crisis. She does. That is one of your three votes. Vote for Kristie O’Brien.

Rockee Armstrong has spent her whole career in education. She started as a public school teacher, became a school administrator, and now she is an assistant professor of education at Arizona State. She is pro-choice. She knows what families and schools in the East Valley are up against, because she has done the work. Vote for Kristie O’Brien and Rockee Armstrong.

Jacob Weinberg gave this country twenty years in the Army as a combat veteran. He fights for veterans’ health care and for families getting squeezed by the cost of living. He supports abortion rights, too. He has already spent a career defending the rest of us. Let’s make sure he canHe is asking to keep doing it at the Capitol. So vote for all three. Vote for Kristie O’Brien for state senate. Vote for Rockee Armstrong and Jacob Weinberg for state house. Vote on or before November 3.

Patients tell me all the time how grateful they are that telehealth is now available to them, that they can do this from home instead of driving hours to a clinic. I tell them the truth. That has only been possible since this February, and only because of who was elected and who voted. You cannot support abortion rights and then send someone back to the Capitol who keeps voting to take them away. That is exactly why this election matters as much as it does.

And you don’t have to take my word for any of this. Every vote Julie Willoughby has cast is public record, and everything Kevin Hartke and Janet Weninger have said is on the record too. You are not being asked to switch sides. You already told this state what you believe when you voted for the right to abortion. All I am asking is that you vote the rest of your ballot the same way.

I can care for the person sitting in front of me. I cannot change the law that follows them through my door. Your vote can. That is why I put my name on this. Thank you for reading it to the end.

In service,

Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick
Camelback Family Planning, Phoenix

P.S. I have provided abortion care in Phoenix for more than 25 years, and I signed this letter with my real name because the stakes are that high. Julie Willoughby is a nurse who voted to keep Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban, then kept voting to restrict care even after this district enshrined the right in our constitution. Kevin Hartke wants to repeal that right outright, and Janet Weninger opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest. You have three votes in LD13. Vote for Kristie O’Brien for state senate. Vote for Rockee Armstrong and Jacob Weinberg for state house. Do not vote for Willoughby, Hartke, or Weninger. Vote on or before November 3.