VINEYARD, Utah — Saturday marked one year since the U.S. Supreme Court's monumental decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
It ultimately reversed a decision the nation's high court made 50 years ago, which declared that the constitution generally protected a pregnant individual's liberty to have an abortion.
READ: Abortions still legal in Utah a year after Roe v. Wade overturned
Saturday afternoon in Vineyard Grove Park, the first Utah Life Festival was held.
"This is really a party — it's not a rally," said Mary Taylor, the president of Pro-Life Utah. "We have a lot of Pro-Life Utah supporters."
The festival is something Taylor says will become an annual event.
While Saturday was a celebration for her and others some frustrations still exist after a year.
"The follow-up law to ban abortion clinics, which, you know, when a state doesn't have elective abortion, we really don't have any cause to license abortion clinics," Taylor said. "As soon as that happened, that was enjoined as well, and it seems that that is going to slow down even the litigation on the abortion trigger ban."
Utah's trigger law, which was blocked by a judge last year, would ban all abortions in the state, except in cases of rape, incest or if the health of the mother is at risk.
"We are no longer devastated. I'll say we are determined," said Katharine Biele, the president of the League of Women Voters of Utah.
For those like Biele, the fight on the issue of abortion continues.
"The League in Utah has joined Planned Parenthood in a lawsuit against the trigger ban and will continue to work for a woman's right to her bodily autonomy," said Biele. "I also just want to say we are all pro-life. That's not the argument; women must have the right to choose."
Whether the laws restricting abortion end up passing in Utah or not, organizations like the Pregnancy Resource Center say they will be there to help.
"We provide everything the client will need for the pregnancy in the first two years of the child's life," said George Stewart, the director of the Pregnancy Resource Center in Salt Lake City. "We provide material goods, car seats, fancy seats, diapers, clothing, breast pumps, I mean, essentially everything they need."
Since there are injunctions against the state's trigger law and the law banning abortion clinics, legal abortions until 18 weeks are still permitted in Utah right now.
The Utah Attorney General's Office says the state's trigger law will be heard by the Utah Supreme Court on Aug. 8.
