It has been precisely a 12 months since Bethany Bomberger gathered in an impromptu huddle exterior a lodge ballroom with fellow anti-abortion activists, overcome with gratitude and optimism as news broke that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade simply hours earlier than the Pro-Life Women’s Conference formally opened.

“There will be life before Roe was overturned and life after,” Ms. Bomberger mentioned this weekend, tearing up as she recalled what she described as a second “the impossible became possible.” She and her husband lead a company that opposes abortion, and that, currently, has branched into combating the rising acceptance of transgender id — what she referred to as “gender radicalism.”

As this 12 months’s convention opened, Ms. Bomberger took to the stage at a modest suburban conference middle exterior St. Louis. “Who’s here with me to let loose?” she requested the group, main a number of hundred ladies within the wave. “We pro-lifers, we have life on our side!” She was sporting a small gold necklace studying “mama,” a present from her son.

The ruling final summer time in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization eradicated the nationwide proper to abortion and despatched the difficulty again to the states. It additionally radically scrambled the landscape of abortion within the United States, shuttering some clinics, prompting others to open, and organising new battles over abortion pills, miscarriage care and contraception. Legal abortions declined more than 6 percent within the first six months after the ruling.

For those that imagine that abortion is the destruction of harmless life and spent years preventing to finish it, June 24 now marks “a great day in the history of our country,” mentioned Shawn Carney, the president and chief government of 40 Days for Life. Mr. Carney’s group was a co-sponsor of a Dobbs anniversary rally on the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the place a crowd of individuals gathered Saturday morning to listen to Mike Pence and Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece.

“The work for life goes on, all across America,” mentioned Mr. Pence, who has pledged to make abortion a centerpiece of his campaign for president.

Redi Degefa, who lives in Washington and works as a employees member in Congress, mentioned she had come to the Saturday morning rally to point out that younger ladies are represented within the anti-abortion motion. She mentioned she was two years out of school and a Catholic, and got here carrying an indication that learn “Pray the rosary to end abortion.”

“It is both a celebration and also a reminder that, like, we have to keep up this energy, the energy that we’ve kept up the past 50 years — we have to double it now and keep going,” Ms. Degefa mentioned. “It’s never going to be a win until abortion is abolished in all 50 states.”

Those in favor of abortion rights additionally used the weekend to rally assist at occasions massive and small throughout the nation. Many gathered in Democratic-led states like California and New York, however there have been additionally rallies in Florida, where the legislature recently passed a ban on most abortions after six weeks that’s on maintain whereas a authorized dispute over Florida abortion regulation strikes ahead.

On Saturday, a crowd of abortion-rights advocates assembled exterior Union Station in Washington. Speakers on the occasion, organized by the Women’s March, emphasised assist for abortion entry amongst Republicans and independents.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, the director of the progressive group MomsRising, drew a powerful cheer when she requested moms within the crowd to determine themselves. “That’s our power,” she mentioned.

For the anti-abortion motion, June has rapidly grow to be the brand new point of interest of the calendar, a shift from the anniversary of when Roe was determined, in January 1973. Mr. Carney in contrast the Roe anniversary to the Dred Scott choice of 1857, which Americans don’t have a good time, and the Dobbs anniversary to Juneteenth, which they do. He is amongst those that have instructed transferring the March for Life, the annual anti-abortion occasion held each January in Washington, to June.

Other activists are observing what they’re calling “Dobbs day” at statehouses this weekend, together with in Georgia and Wisconsin. Some are calling on social conservatives to rebrand June as “Life Month,” a celebration of the choice that serves as a swipe at Pride Month.

In the exhibition corridor this weekend in Missouri, tables displayed bumper stickers, prayer bracelets and shiny stacks of “Pro-Life Kids” coloring books. Nuns in habits mingled with younger ladies in T-shirts studying “Love Wildly” and “Life Has Purpose.” A selfie station boasted a neon signal studying “Pro-Woman Is Pro-Life.”

Attendees had been invited to “come dressed in your best 1972 or 2022 outfit” to a dance celebration on Saturday night time, a reference to the 12 months earlier than Roe was determined and the 12 months the court docket reversed itself 50 years later.

“It makes me so happy to know I’m dancing to celebrate the overturning of Roe,” Danielle Pitzer, director of sanctity of human life at Focus on the Family, mentioned on Friday. She had packed a kaleidoscopic spangled “disco dress,” full with platform footwear and an identical headband.

Though many American women mourned the lack of the nationwide proper to abortion, conservative ladies — and particularly younger ladies — had powered the motion towards abortion and infused it with the fresh energy of a new generation. For them, this second was one to have a good time, and to acknowledge the brand new challenges forward.

American public opinion has moved towards extra assist for abortion rights, making the difficulty a painful political legal responsibility for Republicans. The celebration struggled to come back to a consensus on abortion restrictions, and lots of G.O.P. presidential candidates have prevented the difficulty up to now. At the identical time, ladies haven’t stopped having abortions, even in states with bans: Instead they’ve turned to abortion drugs or traveled to different states.

“We’ve learned this year that there’s still a lot of work to be done,” mentioned Angela Huguenin, the director of operations for And Then There Were None, a company that goals to influence abortion clinic employees to hitch the anti-abortion motion. That effort has been greeted with extra hostility from many clinic employees during the last 12 months, she mentioned. Dozens of clinics have closed since Roe was overturned, and lots of have needed to uproot and transfer to neighboring states.

To the true believers in Missouri, a lot of whom work or volunteer for anti-abortion organizations, a number of the political fallout could be chalked as much as a communication failure: If the general public higher understood the motion’s commitments to each moms and infants, it could see issues in a different way.

Some within the motion are skeptical that Dobbs represents a clear-cut victory. Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa, the founding father of the small anti-abortion group New Wave Feminists, was at a convention hosted by National Right to Life final 12 months when the court docket handed down its choice. The room erupted into nearly panicked elation, she mentioned. Her personal emotions had been extra combined.

“It didn’t solve anything or do anything, it just created chaos,” she mentioned. Some of the brand new state legal guidelines didn’t embody exceptions for rape or incest and, she mentioned, “horror stories” have since emerged during which ladies have been denied look after being pregnant problems.

“Pro-lifers might have won the battle but they’re not going to win the war” except they write higher legal guidelines and advocate a extra complete social security internet, she mentioned. Missteps, she added, “could easily lead to the codification of abortion rights.”

The host of the convention in Missouri, Abby Johnson, is a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who’s now a outstanding anti-abortion activist.

In an interview on Saturday, Ms. Johnson mirrored on the challenges now going through the motion, together with the overall unwillingness of Republican presidential candidates, apart from Mr. Pence, to debate the difficulty in public.

“I’m not sure why some politicians back away from abortion when clearly they have been using abortion as a fund-raising tool for many years,” she mentioned. “They’ve been fund-raising off the backs of babies for decades, and now that Roe is gone they’re going to pretend abortion is not an issue anymore?”

Anti-abortion activists ought to proceed supporting pregnant ladies and moms, she mentioned; her personal group was one of many first within the motion to supply paid parental go away to its staff.

But now isn’t a time for the motion to be overly involved with “optics,” she mentioned. Unlike a few of her fellow activists, particularly within the older era and in mainstream lobbying organizations, she favors prosecuting ladies for their very own abortions in some circumstances. Bans which have handed in conservative states typically don’t embody prison penalties for ladies who’ve abortions, as an alternative focusing on docs, capsule suppliers and even mates who assist a girl safe an abortion. A smaller, more hard-line group of abortion opponents has pushed for legal guidelines that embody penalties for pregnant ladies.

“It’s an old talking point that women are victims,” she mentioned. “If we really believe, like the pro-life movement has said for 50 years, that abortion is murder, than I think we have to act like it.”

Onstage the day earlier than, she had warned concerning the rise of medicine abortion, and of the abortion-rights motion’s dedication to “never stop killing babies.”

“We just had this big win,” she instructed the rapt crowd. “Let’s keep winning.”

Zach Montague contributed reporting from Washington.