'We will not go back. We will not go down quietly': Abortion rights rally in Eugene joins hundreds across nation

Mariah Terrill will never forget the “sheer terror” she felt seeing the two pink lines on a test confirming she was pregnant.

Before that point, she was sure that any decision about whether to end a pregnancy would be easy, but she and her boyfriend, who’s now her husband, took two weeks to ultimately decide to have a medication abortion.

She stressed that only the two of them made that decision and that her abortion was uneventful but still lifesaving.

Terrill spoke to a crowd of hundreds gathered outside the Erb Memorial Union on the University of Oregon’s campus to protest the Supreme Court's leaked draft opinion to overturn the nearly 50-year precedent set by Roe v. Wade.

The protest was part of the nationwide "Bans Off Our Bodies" daylong event organized by groups including Women's March, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, UltraViolet, MoveOn, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Rallies across nation:Thousands gather for nationwide 'Bans Off Our Bodies' rallies for abortion rights

There were a handful of counterprotesters, but nearly all were passive. University police pulled aside one man who was yelling and getting into verbal altercations with people attending the rally.

Terrill also spoke before a smaller crowd about an hour earlier in front of the Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse.

During both rallies, which came after nearly two weeks of protests after the leak of a draft opinion to overturn the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, Terrill and others who spoke sent a clear message: "We will not go back. We will not go down quietly."

“How dare you trivialize and politicize something that is so deeply personal?” Terrill asked the Supreme Court and politicians who seek to limit and ban abortions.

As the official ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization is expected within a few weeks, abortion access for millions of Americans remains uncertain. The potential decision would trigger an abortion ban in about half the nation's states, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Oregon is one of 16 states that have laws that protect the right to abortion.

Oregon officials codified the precedent set by Roe v Wade in anticipation that the court might overturn it, said Val Hoyle, the commissioner of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries and a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Fourth Congressional District.

“We hoped it wouldn’t come, but we knew that it would,” Hoyle said.