President Joe Biden said Friday he would fight to preserve access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and he called on Americans to elect more Democrats who would safeguard rights upended by the court’s decision. “This is not over,” he declared.

“Let’s be very clear, the health and life of women across this nation are now at risk,” he said from the White House on what he called “a sad day for the court and the country.”

Biden added that “the court has done what it’s never done before — expressly taking away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans.”

Republicans and conservative leaders celebrated the culmination of a decades-long campaign to undo the nationwide legalization of abortion that began with Roe v. Wade in 1973.

“Millions of Americans have spent half a century praying, marching and working toward today’s historic victories for the rule of law and for innocent life,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., an architect of efforts to tilt the Supreme Court to the right.

Although Biden has previously expressed conflicted feelings about abortion, he delivered a forceful defense Friday. Noting that Republican-controlled states now had a clear path to ban abortion even in cases of incest or rape, he said “it just stuns me.”

Since the country will increasingly see a patchwork of policies — with some states restricting abortion and others providing it freely — Biden emphasized that the court decision does not prevent anyone from traveling to end a pregnancy.