Hundreds of abortion-rights campaigners, including Democrats seeking their party's 2020 presidential nomination, rallied in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to protest new restrictions on abortion passed by Republican-dominated legislatures in eight states.

Many of the restrictions are intended to draw legal challenges, which religious conservatives hope will lead the nation's top court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy.

"We are not going to allow them to move our country backward," U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of the two dozen Democrats running for president, told the crowd through a megaphone.