“This morning I said to myself, ‘I hope he doesn’t do it today,’” said Ann Scheidler, the executive director of the Pro-Life Action League.

He did.

“It’s not unexpected. It is disappointing, but we continue to think that Obama is very pro-abortion.”

Thirty-six years ago Thursday, abortion-rights supporters across the country joined in jubilation as the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the Roe v. Wade case, which established that women should be afforded the basic right to have an abortion.

Those in favor of Roe v. Wade have even more cause to celebrate Thursday, with President Barack Obama overturning what is known as the global gag rule.

This rule was imposed on American aid going to programs in foreign countries, but with one big stipulation: These countries had to agree, in their sex education practices, to promote abstinence, according to political science professor Harry Wray of DePaul University. Wray noted that this policy was brought in by George H.W. Bush, overturned by the Clinton administration and reinstated by George W. Bush.

While Scheidler and other member of the PLAL joined other anti-abortion activists in the Washington, D.C., March for Life, other Chicago groups gathered locally.

“It’s a day to remember,” said Cathy Christeller of the Chicago Women’s AIDS Project. “We’re looking forward to turning back negative Bush policies.”

Christeller and members of the Chicago Foundation for Women and the Chicago Abortion Fund made up the group of almost 50 who joined in a celebration of the Roe v. Wade anniversary on the corner of Adams and Dearborn in the Loop led by Gaylon Alcaraz, the executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund.

“I don’t think he’ll appoint justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade,” Alcaraz said of Obama.

While Alcaraz and like-minded others are optimistic about what this means for the future of abortion rights in America, others, who share Scheidler’s views, are not so thrilled.

“We have to change the culture from the bottom up because the government is too power-hungry to care about the unborn children or the women,” Scheidler said. “You have to do it through one-on-one conversion.”