Sioux Falls, S.D. ? It’s not as if getting an abortion in this state is easy now.

Courtney, a 20-year-old auto mechanic and mother of a 1-year-old girl, rode six hours from her small town to get to the edge of the state and South Dakota’s lone abortion clinic last week.

She had to synchronize her trip with one of the few days a month doctors fly in from Minnesota to perform abortions. State law required she wait 24 hours after consulting a physician before the procedure. If she were a few years younger, Courtney would have first needed to tell one of her parents.

Still, 800 times a year women from throughout South Dakota head to the Planned Parenthood clinic across from Roosevelt High School for abortions.

“It’s a hassle,” Courtney said. “(But) everybody pretty much knows you can get it.”

Perhaps not for long.

A bill passed by the state Legislature, which the governor says he is “inclined” to sign into law, would outlaw virtually all abortions in the state.

Those pushing the abortion ban – with an exception only to save the mother’s life – concede it would appear to run contrary to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that found a constitutional right to abortion.

South Dakota legislators recently passed a bill that would outlaw most abortions in the state, raising speculation of a court challenge to Roe v. Wade. From left, Nancy Neff, Nicole Osmundson, Karen Nelson and Kimberly Martinez protest outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Sioux Falls, S.D.

That’s the point.

“It’s time to check if we can change things,” said state Rep. Roger Hunt, the small-town lawyer who wrote the legislation.

If a South Dakota ban survived Supreme Court review, abortion battles could break out across 50 state legislatures in ways not seen in more than three decades. If the court overturned a South Dakota ban, that would further cement the legal precedent set by Roe.

Even the hint of a fresh court decision is likely to whip up activists on both sides of the issue.

Elections of state lawmakers and governors would be newly infused with the country’s most controversial social issue. The fervency of anti-abortion voters would come smack against an American majority that tells pollsters, with reservations, women should have at least some access to the procedure.

Activists on both sides see the South Dakota ban as a high-stakes play.

To Hunt and others pushing the ban – at odds with some abortion opponents fearful that the strategy might backfire – it’s all about timing.

They cite more evidence supporting the belief that life begins at conception. Hunt says three decades of legal abortions also have shown abortion is often harmful to the well-being of women who have the procedure. And he detects growing discomfort in the country with abortion.

But most strategically, the high court has changed.

Gone is Sandra Day O’Connor, often seen as the swing vote that kept Roe in place. After her resignation and the death of William Rehnquist, President Bush put conservatives Samuel Alito and John Roberts on the Supreme Court.

That has raised wide speculation that Alito, Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas all might vote to overturn Roe if given the right case. Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens are seen as defending a woman’s right to an abortion. So Anthony Kennedy, whose record on abortion laws has been mixed, might be an iffy swing vote that anti-abortion forces can dream about turning things their way.

Hunt notes Stevens turns 86 in April, and it could take two to three years for a South Dakota abortion ban to reach the Supreme Court.

While far from universal, the speculation about a court willing to reverse abortion law is made by both sides – each perhaps trying to motivate their respective grassroots workers.

“It’s very plausible that Roe will be overturned,” said Priscilla Smith, the director of the domestic legal program for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We’re cranking back up to the same type of fervor we had in the late ’80s and early ’90s when the anti-abortion forces were excited that they could overturn Roe.”