SCOTUS leak sparks abortion protests across the U.S.

STORY: In cities across the United States, thousands took to the streets to demand abortion rights on Tuesday, a day after the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

The landmark ruling in 1973 legalized abortion nationwide.

Outside the court's building, there was shock and rage from protestors.

"It makes me sick. The idea that our rights as women, as uterus owners can be taken away, that they can deny us rights over our bodies. It makes me shake to my core."

"I don't think any of us thought that 50 years of precedent on Roe v Wade could just be tossed out at the flick of a fingernail that suddenly we don't care about precedent."

Some campaigners carried coat hangers, a grim reference to the 'back alley' abortions that experts say could become common again.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren appeared to tell the crowd that she would fight back.

"I am angry because an extremist United States Supreme Court, thinks that they could impose their extremist views on all of the women of this country and they are wrong!""

Those sentiments were echoed in protests held in other U.S. cities.

From one of the largest, in New York...to Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago, many of them rallying under the slogan "off our bodies".

Earlier on Tuesday, it was anti-abortion protests that dominated the area outside the court.

Dozens chanted slogans that described abortion as violence and oppression.

While in San Francisco, a man calling himself a "Pro-Life Spiderman" scaled a skyscraper.

Abortion is one of the most divisive issues in U.S. politics and has been for nearly a half-century.

The abortion ruling, due by the end of June, would be the court's biggest since former President Donald Trump succeeded in naming three conservative justices to the court.