The Supreme Court will not be able to avoid the issue forever.

South Dakota is getting closer to banning nearly all abortions in the state. The state House and Senate passed the legislation, which would make performing an abortion a felony, on Friday.

The bill now goes to Gov. Mike Rounds, who said he is inclined to sign it into law. If signed, the measure would go into effect July 1. The ban would become the broadest one against abortion in the country.

Planned Parenthood, which operates the only clinic that performs abortions in the state, has said it would challenge the law if Rounds signs it.

The measure directly goes against the landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion.

A ban in a state like South Dakota may not seem like a big deal. It's only one small state, right?

But with the recent confirmations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, laws that challenge long-established precedents may become more and more common.

Anti-abortion rights advocates have wanted the Roe v. Wade ruling to be overturned for many years. Now is the time for them to bring the blanket issue of abortion back to the Supreme Court, with two new conservative justices and what many say could be a significant swing of the high court to the right.

For Americans on both sides of the abortion issue, the importance of Roberts' and Alito's confirmations and of state laws that will likely end up in front of them must be acknowledged.

This is, after all, how the system is supposed to work, in theory: The Supreme Court exists not only to set precedents, but also to review those precedents years later to decide if changing circumstances and a growing society require a new standard or a reaffirmation of the old one.

The Supreme Court is going to have to respond to this one eventually, and South Dakota may be in the process of giving it a golden opportunity to do so.