Australia has seen its first major protest in the wake of the Roe v Wade decision with hundreds of people gathering outside the US Consulate in Perth.
The US Supreme Court decision last week ended 50 years of legal precedent, which recognised women's rights to access an abortion.
Amid chants of "my body, my choice", a woman spoke of her own experience accessing surgical abortion after a miscarriage to which a woman in the crowd shouted "you're so brave".
Organiser Nicole McEwen told the ABC she was outraged by the decision in the United States.
"It was such an important and essential decision for them historically, and then through decades of far right and conservative and evangelical groups organising around this issue, they managed to undermine it," Ms McEwan said.
"Obviously we do have those evangelical and right-wing groups here in Australia.
"I don't think we're going to lose the right to abortion tomorrow, but I do think it's something that we do need to be organised and steadfast around."
Rally highlights need for change in WA
Ms McEwan said the issue hit home in her state of WA, which is the only Australian jurisdiction that has not fully decriminalised abortion.
It also requires two doctors to sign off on the procedure up to 20 weeks, while in other jurisdictions excluding Tasmania it is just one.
In Tasmania, one doctor can perform an abortion up to 16 weeks, after which a second doctor must be consulted.
"The fact that our abortion is still regulated by the criminal code, and the fact that it's so inaccessible and expensive, is a really important issue here that I thought women and other people would resonate with that," Ms McEwan said.
High School student Ella Power, 17, said she had been "frustrated and angry" on the weekend following the US decision.
"I've never felt so passionate about a cause. This is the first protest I've been to," she said.
"It made me feel like I can't just sit there and do nothing."
'I just never thought it would actually happen'
Her friend Bhavana Joshi said watching Roe v Wade overturned had struck her personally.
"This whole weekend I've been feeling this sense of hopelessness, and I needed to do something to overcome this hopelessness," she said.
"I just never thought it [the overturning of Roe v Wade] would actually happen. So then watching it happen just makes me angry because we're supposed to be progressing forward and instead we're going backwards."
US citizen Sarah Fhay, from North Carolina, said the decision was devastating.
"I've got friends that want to be parents and friends that don't want to be parents and they're all terrified because if something happens to them and they need that life-saving procedure they can't get it."
