About 30 years ago, doctors in an Indian Health Service clinic in Tuba City, Arizona, told Jamescita Peshlakai that her health would be at risk if she continued her pregnancy. Peshlakai, who is a citizen of the Navajo Nation, had given birth before; her young daughter was a toddler. But this second pregnancy was nonviable, meaning that the fetus would not survive outside of the uterus. The physicians performed a dilation and curettage procedure, commonly known as a “D&C,” to remove the fetal tissue.

“It was nobody’s business,” Peshlakai, now 56, recalled. “I did that, and I didn’t think twice about it, and it was my own decision with my family.”

Peshlakai, the descendant of medicine men and women, learned afterward about traditional methods used by the Navajo centuries before to terminate a pregnancy. She sees abortion as a part of her people’s history, and argues that views opposing the procedure were introduced with the morality circumscribed by the Christian church.

“When people were being hunted by the U.S. cavalry, and you were hiding with your children, you had to keep the ones that were alive, alive,” Peshlakai, a former state senator, said. “Women practiced in secret ceremonies to do this kind of thing. It was handed down.”

Despite this history, it can be difficult to talk about abortion on the reservation, given the traditional stigma surrounding the topic in American life. But in the two years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion access has become a ubiquitous topic in Arizona, where the state legislature narrowly voted to repeal a nineteenth-century near-total ban that was on the books. Arizona currently prohibits the procedure under most circumstances after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

An initiative on the ballot this November, Proposition 139, would allow for abortions through fetal viability, generally around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Jaynie Parrish, the executive of Arizona Native Vote, a Native voter-engagement organization that supports Proposition 139, said that local community matriarchs had expressed support for abortion access in small group meetings. These conclaves include respected elders from Navajo, Hopi, and White Mountain Apache tribes.

“They’ll look around, maybe, but they’ll be like, ‘Of course it’s our decision. It’s no one else’s.’ … And then we start getting into the deeper conversations about shaming and judging,” Parrish, who is Navajo, said. “It’s been so taboo for so long, the way it’s been framed, and it’s going to take some people some time to shed that.”

Abortion access may be a critical issue for Navajo voters in Arizona as they consider their options on a state and federal level this November. Democrats argue that abortion is also on the ballot with their candidates, with Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s nominee for president; Representative Ruben Gallego, who is seeking to become Arizona’s next........

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