Friend,

This week the Arizona state supreme court reinstated a Civil War era law that all but eliminates abortion in the state.

We’ve known for years this day was coming. Even before the Dobbs decision, Arizona was one of nine states with a Pre-Roe ban still on the books that immediately became enforceable when SCOTUS struck down Roe.

They call them zombie laws, and many are more than a century old – 160 years in Arizona’s case!

This reanimated abortion ban hails from the era of slavery, indigenous genocide, and unmitigated patriarchy – a law passed 48 years before Arizona was even a state and 56 years before women had the right to vote.

Anti-abortion laws don’t just hurt women and people who can get pregnant. They hurt vulnerable women in particular. Millions of poor and working class women can’t afford to take time off of work and spend hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars to travel out of state to claim sovereignty over their bodies, to protect their health, and defend their families.

Make no mistake: if Arizona’s ban is allowed to take effect, women will die.

I practiced internal medicine for 25 years, and I remember the terrifying days before Roe – watching close friends endure the horrors of back alley abortions.

Since the Dobbs decision, maternal mortality has shot up at least 24%, and among Black mothers nearly 40%. And it’s going to get worse as more bans take effect.

For all these reasons, I am furious.

Yes, I am furious with right wing state legislatures that push these radical abortion bans and the far-right governors and courts that put them into practice.

I am also outraged by decades of empty rhetoric from Democrats that continues to this day.

In the 51 years since Roe was first decided, Democrats controlled Congress nearly HALF of that time.

Every single Democratic president since Roe held a trifecta (controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House) at some point in their presidency.

With his trifecta in 2021-2022, Joe Biden could have guaranteed abortion rights before OR after Dobbs. He didn’t.

Never once in 51 years did Democrats make a serious effort to codify the right to an abortion into federal law. But they did raise BILLIONS of dollars from ordinary Americans who entrusted them to fight for us.

This is not a fundraising issue to me. This is personal. As a doctor I know all too well that pregnancy itself is often a life-threatening condition. As an activist and a mother, I believe fiercely that no one should ever be forced to remain pregnant.

In his latest re-election ad featuring a woman who nearly lost her life in Texas because she couldn’t get an abortion, Joe Biden has the audacity to claim “Donald Trump did this.”

But Trump couldn’t do this on his own. The inaction of the Democratic party is no less a betrayal of women than the extreme right-wing lawmakers imposing these bans.

Politics as usual paved the way for the Arizona court’s damnable decision this week, and it won’t stop here as long as we continue electing the same leaders.

Access to safe abortion is a non-negotiable human right. It is healthcare, and like all healthcare it should be guaranteed and freely available for anyone who needs it.

When I am president, it will be.

In solidarity,

Jill