WASHINGTON -- The overturning of Roe v. Wade met with joy and anger on Friday, as street demonstrations that began outside the Supreme Court after the decades-old guarantee of abortion access was struck down spread through the nation's capital and to cities across the United States.
"I can't believe it's real," said Lauren Marlowe, 22, an anti-abortion demonstrator who shrieked and embraced her friends when the decision came down. "I just want to hug everyone. ... We're in a post-Roe America now."
As the day wore on, many of the anti-abortion demonstrators left and more supporters of abortion rights began to gather in downtown Washington.
Hundreds chanted and held signs outside the Supreme Court, joined at one point by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who promised through a borrowed megaphone that the left would work to restore the rights revoked by the court.
Marches in support of abortion rights were preparing to unfold in Washington, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville and elsewhere.
Washington, D.C., police said they had activated the full department -- placing officers on standby in case of violence or vandalism -- through the weekend. But by late Friday afternoon, no arrests had been made.
In Washington, the only serious incident during the day involved a demonstrator who climbed to the top of the 70-foot archway over the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, shutting down traffic late Friday morning. Police said the demonstrator displayed a flag or a banner reading: "Don't tread on my uterus."
Caroline Flermoen and Kate Spaulding, both 17, had just begun their walking tour of Capitol Hill on Friday morning when they heard chanting and music. They immediately knew what the noise meant.
The girls -- from Grand Rapids, Mich., and Boston, respectively -- are rising high school seniors and were in Washington for an educational summer program. Their guide had mentioned that a decision on Roe might come during their tour, but to hear it, the girls said, was surreal.
"Bye bye reproductive rights," Flermoen texted her mother at 10:14 a.m.
They joined a couple hundred people outside the Supreme Court. When someone offered them bright-green stickers reading "Overturn Roe? H--- no!" with an illustration of a crossed-out coat hanger, they accepted.
Stephanie Gross, a 21-year-old college senior, believed the court's decision paved the way for a better future, she said.
"When I have kids someday, I can say that I was there when it happened," Gross said. "Can you believe it?"
But as Shannon Mayes, 52, watched the crowds gathered in front of the Supreme Court, with their flags and hand-drawn posters and loud music, she couldn't help but think that abortion was more nuanced than either faction let on.
Mayes, a substitute teacher from Akins, S.C., was raised Catholic, and understood that for many devout Christians, a life was a life.
But Mayes had a story that even many of her friends didn't know.
In 1997, she said she and her husband had learned that only half of their son's heart had developed. A doctor told them that if Mayes carried him to term, she would have to move to Boston for advanced medical care.
He was expected to live only a few years, if he wasn't stillborn. She and her husband chose to terminate the pregnancy at 20 weeks.
Mayes had gotten an epidural, gone through labor and held her son William -- small and unmoving -- in her arms, before she let him go.
She went on to have two other children, she said. But the decision changed her life -- and her feelings about Friday's Supreme Court ruling.
"What I went through -- it's a gray area," she said. "People have to understand that. And if they don't, they aren't very empathetic."
Near the Supreme Court building, an abortion rights protester cries at the news. (The Washington Post/Eric Lee)