The first Women’s march of the Biden administration headed to the Supreme Court on Monday. This comes as the nation is demanding continued access to abortion in a year when conservative lawmakers and judges have put it in jeopardy. 

The streets reverberated with the chants of “My body, my choice”. Before heading out on the march, they rallied in a square near the White House, waving signs that said “Mind your own uterus,” “I love someone who had an abortion” and “Abortion is a personal choice, not a legal debate,” among other messages. Some wore T-shirts reading simply “1973,” a reference to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which made abortion legal for generations of American women.

Elaine Baijal, a 19-year-old student at American University told AP, “It’s sad that we still have to fight for our right 40 years later. But it’s a tradition I want to continue.”

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Organizers say the Washington march was among hundreds of abortion-themed protests held around the country Saturday. The demonstrations took place two days before the start of a new term for the Supreme Court that will decide the future of abortion rights in the United States, after appointments of justices by President Donald Trump strengthened conservative control of the high court.

“Shame, shame, shame!” marchers chanted while walking past the Trump International Hotel on their way to the Supreme Court. 

“We’re going to keep giving it to Texas,” Marsha Jones of the Afiya Center for Black women’s health care in Dallas, pledged to the Washington crowd. “You can no longer tell us what to do with our bodies!”

Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of Planned Parenthood nationally, said, “The moment is dark … but that is why we are here,” 

With the upcoming Supreme Court term, “No matter where you are, this fight is at your doorstep right now.”

In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke at rallies in Seneca Falls and then Albany. “I’m sick and tired of having to fight over abortion rights,” she said. “It’s settled law in the nation and you are not taking that right away from us, not now not ever.”

On the other hand, at an unrelated event in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins said that the Texas law was “extreme, inhumane and unconstitutional” and that she’s working to make Roe v. Wade the “law of the land.”

Police believed that the rally could not be violent. Therefore, security in the capital was much lighter than for a political rally a few weeks ago in support of Trump supporters jailed in the Capitol Hill insurrection.

With Inputs from Associated Press