“We are not going to allow them to move our country backward,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told the crowd from a lectern near the high court.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, also attended the Washington rally.
“I stand in solidarity with those across the country to #StoptheBans,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., tweeted, using the hashtag that unites all the events. “We will fight with everything we’ve got to protect a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions.”
Dozens of other #StopTheBans rallies at statehouses and city centers around the nation — as well as in Puerto Rico and Canada — were scheduled Tuesday.
The events were organized in part by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America and other abortion rights groups.
Alabama last week enacted the strictest abortion law in the country, making performing the procedure a felony at any stage of pregnancy with close to no exceptions.
Governors in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Ohio have approved laws that ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected — usually around six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant. Missouri and Louisiana are close to enacting similar prohibitions.
“We have fought — and will continue to fight — these bans in the courts, and we are proud to join today with our partners and people around the country to fight these bans in the streets,” the ACLU said in a statement ahead of the day’s protests.
Alabama’s abortion ban and some of the other recent restrictions are intended to challenge Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide.