Nevada is the latest state to beat its chest defending people's right to kill their children.  The Legislature in the Sagebrush State is preparing to vote on S.B. 179, which would make abortion easier, more convenient, and less legally dangerous for abortionists — for example, by removing the requirement to verify a mother's age and by making it much easier for abortionists to claim they have a mother's "informed consent."  The bill is also intended to shore up Nevada's pro-abortion orientation in the event of a credible court challenge to Roe v. Wade, through which the Supreme Court in 1973 forced abortion on every state.

One pro-life organization told LifeSiteNews that S.B. 179 threatens to make sex-trafficking easier in Nevada, because removing the age-reporting requirement will interfere with mandatory reporting provisions.  Nevada Right to Life's Melissa Clement also warned of an "abortion free-for-all" if the bill passes — a real possibility, considering the Legislature's Democrat majorities (13-8 Senate, 29-13 Assembly) and pro-abortion Democrat governor.

Abortion free-for-alls are in vogue, with corresponding backlash from pro-life states.  New York lit itself pink in January over passage of the "Reproductive Health Act," which supercharged the state's already enthusiastically pro-abortion bent.  Legislators in Virginia tried something similar, with Governor Ralph Northam lending his support to leaving even born babies to die of exposure when their mothers don't want them.  (Nor can anyone claim that Northam, like former New York City Council [not Assembly, as a previous edition incorrectly read –ed.] speaker Christine Quinn, is too stupid to understand what abortion is.  He's a pediatric neurologist.)

To an extent, these laws are pro forma, a sort of pro-abortion virtue-signaling.  The USA has been in "abortion free-for-all" mode since 1973: thanks to the "health of mother" provision in Doe v. Bolton and Anthony Kennedy's weird ramblings in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, hospitals and doctors can legally kill babies by ripping their arms and legs off or by poison in every state in the Union up to the due date.  Laws like New York's only put an exclamation point on that reality, perhaps helpfully reminding Americans that this is not some new barbaric initiative, but rather the status quo.

A possible benefit of certain states' full-throated abortion support is the backlash from others who'd like to stem tide of human blood.  Georgia's governor recently signed into law a bill that forbids the sucking out and crushing of a child once his heartbeat can be detected.  (Kentucky, Mississippi, and Ohio have done likewise.)  Alabama's new pro-life law is even more protective of babies in the womb, making abortion into a felony except when it "is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk" to the mother.

How do states like Alabama threaten Roe v. Wade?  There's the argument that since rabidly liberal lawyer claques like the ACLU reliably convince some pro-abortion judge to strangle, Ralph Northam­–style, every pro-life law at the moment of its birth, these laws are intended less to protect babies directly and more to get a Roe challenge past the columns of the Supreme Court.  Roe made it to the SCOTUS in the first place based on procedural misdirection and blatant lies from the plaintiff and her lawyers; the pro-life side wants to be more honest in its presentation.

Will an Alabama or a Georgia law coast through the courts into a final SCOTUS reversal of Roe? Liberals in states like New York, Virginia, and now Nevada are seriously considering the possibility.  That's why they're proposing and passing laws to reassure women that they'll still be able to kill their children in a post-Roe (and presumably post-Doe and post-Casey) America.

For now, the status quo on abortion is likely to prevail.  Practically, pro-life laws tend to have self-neutering "rape and incest" and "health of mother" exceptions, and enforcement is extremely rare — not to mention that challenging abortion raises questions about marriage, sex, and childrearing that an "equality"-fetishizing, radically individualized, two-income-household America will cringe at.

That conversation is going to have to happen sooner or later.  The more Americans polarize on abortion, and the more people understand the simple truth of what abortion is — the violent destruction of human children, overwhelmingly for convenience's sake —the worse our national cognitive dissonance on this issue will get.  Nevada is only the latest sign.

Drew Belsky is American Thinker's deputy editor.  Contact him at drew@americanthinker.com.