A letter from Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick

Dear neighbor,

My name is Dr. Gabrielle Goodrick. I am a family physician in North Central Phoenix, and I’ve spent my career providing abortion care. I opened my own clinic in 1999, and in November 2000, I became the first doctor to dispense the abortion pill anywhere in the Southwest. So, when I describe what our laws do, I’m not speaking from theory. I’m speaking from what I have seen in my exam rooms.

The morning after Arizona’s Supreme Court brought back our 1864 abortion ban, I sat across from a patient and could not answer their most basic question, which was whether I was still allowed to help. Not because I didn’t know the medicine. Because I did not know, from one hour to the next, whether the care I have provided for more than two decades had just become a felony I could go to prison for.

I love my work and the patients I care for, but it has never come without risk, for me or for my family. You may have noticed that I am signing this with my real name, and I want to be honest about what that costs. 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, and last year the threats and stalking against providers more than doubled. This is not abstract to me. Most days I carry bear mace in my bag, and I bring my dog to work.

I am writing to ask for two of your votes. Vote for Dr. Amelia Gallitano for state senate. Vote for Stephanie Simacek for state house. Don’t give either of those votes to Shawnna Bolick. Vote on or before November 3.

This work has already cost my family once. More than 10 years ago, a private school sent us 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 I had not followed their moral code. She had just finished ninth grade, 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.

Now let me tell you why I am asking for your votes, from inside the room where these laws actually land.

The ban the Arizona Supreme Court revived was not new. It was written in 1864, before Arizona was a state, before women could vote, and three years before Phoenix was even founded. A near-total ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest, suddenly enforceable again 160 years later.

Here’s the part almost nobody was told: That ban didn’t fall out of the sky. In 2021, Shawnna Bolick co-sponsored a bill allowing prosecutors to charge abortion patients and providers with first-degree murder, which is punishable by the death penalty in Arizona. She was talking about doctors like me and patients like the ones in my waiting room. The next year, she co-sponsored a bill that included language specifically stating it did not repeal any earlier abortion law, including the 1864 ban. The Arizona Supreme Court later cited that exact language as the reason the 1864 ban was still enforceable. So when the court reached back into the nineteenth century and revived it, that was exactly what the bill she co-sponsored had set up.

This is why I am asking you to vote for Amelia Gallitano and Stephanie Simacek — to make sure Shawnna Bolick does not get another term to write the next ban.

When the outrage came, she posted online the same day the court ruled, calling for repeal. But in that same post, she also defended her 2022 vote and laid out why she’d supported it, the same vote that kept the 1864 ban in place. She was calling for repeal and defending the vote that made repeal necessary, in the same breath. She later cast a vote to repeal the 1864 ban. That’s the vote she wants you to remember. She’s counting on you not to ask who put the ban there in the first place. Vote for Amelia Gallitano for state senate. Vote for Stephanie Simacek for state house. Not Shawnna Bolick.

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. Shawnna Bolick voted to jail physicians, pharmacists, and patients for accessing or providing medication abortion through the mail. If we truly care about protecting abortion rights in Arizona, then it’s our responsibility to send people to the Capitol who will be champions for our rights and our health. That is exactly why this election matters as much as it does.

One vote to repeal the ban doesn’t undo the votes that kept it alive. This November, you get to decide whether she gets another term.

Her record is not simply a matter of opinion, and it doesn’t matter what’s in her heart. It’s the set of votes I’m forced to actually practice under. This November, you get to decide whether she gets another term to keep at it. Vote for Amelia Gallitano for state senate and Stephanie Simacek for state house on or before November 3.

Let me tell you who they are, because your ballot is going to ask you about both. Dr. Amelia Gallitano is a board-certified psychiatrist and neuroscientist who helped found the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Phoenix and has spent nine years caring for veterans with PTSD at the Phoenix VA. When I imagine handing the pen to someone else, someone who will write the laws that reach into the room where I work, I want it to be a person who has sat with patients on the hardest day of their lives. She has. She supports abortion rights, and there is no question where she stands. That is why I am asking you to vote for Amelia Gallitano, alongside Stephanie Simacek, and to leave Shawnna Bolick off your ballot.

Rep. Stephanie Simacek is running to keep her seat in the state house. When that same court revived the 1864 ban, she called the decision immoral, unprincipled, and wrong, and she has kept fighting to protect abortion access every session since. She won that seat by fewer than a thousand votes. In a district this size, a thousand votes is a few streets. In other words, you and the people on your block. That is the whole margin between a legislature that writes more abortion bans and one that finally stops — your ballot decides. Vote for Amelia Gallitano for state senate and Stephanie Simacek for state house, on or before November 3.

That very ballot is in your hands, or it will be in a day or two. You don’t have to take my word. Every vote Shawnna Bolick has cast is public record, and I hope you will look, because it is worse in full than anything I have room for here. Vote for Dr. Amelia Gallitano for state senate and Stephanie Simacek for state house, on or before November 3.

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. Shawnna Bolick co-sponsored the bill that kept Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban alive, then asked for credit for repealing the crisis she helped cause. Do not let her have it. Vote for Amelia Gallitano for state senate and Stephanie Simacek for state house, on or before November 3.