Nevada Still Way-Station for Unwanted Babies

But Traffic’s Thinnin’ Out

It appears—though Heaven alone knows how the newspapers still manage to find their way into our outhouses—that Nevada is no longer the booming crossroads of other people’s problems. Only 8.8 percent of the abortions performed in the silver-plated state last year were for folks who’d come from elsewhere, down a whopping 47.4 percent from the year before.

For once, something in America is shrinking that ought to be.

The learned gentry will tell you this is bad news. That people—young women in a state of panic or persuasion—are now “burdened” by restrictions and “forced” to stay home and rethink what they were about to do. To which I say–good. There’s an old saying–“Don’t go lookin’ for a solution that leaves a body in the ground.”

And if there ain’t such a saying, then now there is.

Ever since the Supreme Court finally read the Constitution and realized it didn’t say a blessed thing about abortion—between the commas or otherwise—many states have had the good sense to slam the door on the practice. And, lo and behold–people stopped crossing borders with the same frequency.

Maybe not out of agreement, but out of difficulty—and let’s be honest, virtue sometimes starts by tripping over the apple cart.

Nevada, for her part, still offers abortions like a saloon offers gin—eagerly and without judgment. And groups, like the “Wild West Access Fund,” that’ll pay your way to come and do what should never get done. They say most of their customers are from Utah and Arizona, though Arizona’s traffic thinned out once a judge decided there ought to be a line in the sand at fifteen weeks.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not heartless. I believe a woman should be able to choose a great many things—her hat, her husband, her horse—but not whether a baby lives or dies. That’s not a choice but a tragedy dressed up like freedom and invited to Sunday supper.

Let me put it in plain talk–You don’t kill the calf because the barn door was left open, and you sure as sin don’t kill a child because a nation forgot how to raise them. And if there are laws that help turn young women back toward life—real life, with diapers, noise, and all—then I say God bless the lawmakers, even if they’re mostly lawyers.

So here’s to fewer out-of-state abortions, and here’s to states with enough backbone to say “no more.” Let Nevada keep the gambling, the quick divorces, and the neon prophets.

As for the rest of us, let’s try raising children instead of raising excuses.