U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday criticized the U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, saying the health and life of American women are now at risk.

"It's a sad day for the court and for the country," Biden said in a White House address after the ruling, which he said was taking the country back 150 years.

Biden promised to go on fighting for reproductive rights but said no executive order can guarantee a woman’s right to choose.

He urged voters to send lawmakers to Congress who will work to codify abortion rights as the law of the land.

"This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot," Biden said, referring to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision making abortion legal nationally.

Biden made a point of calling for any protests to remain peaceful. "No intimidation. Violence is never acceptable," he said.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade case, ending the constitutional right to abortion. In a 6-3 vote, the court struck down the 1973 case that guaranteed the constitutional right to abortion for about 50 years.

The U.S. president said women have the power to control their own destiny, adding: "With Roe gone, let's be very clear. The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk."

The ruling sparked a backlash among many, including former President Barack Obama, non-governmental organizations, and Amnesty International. The court's headquarters was surrounded by people protesting the ruling. Biden said the protests should be peaceful.

"Violence is never acceptable. Threats and intimidation are not speech. We must stand against violence in any form, regardless of your rationale," he added.

On the other hand, former President Donald Trump praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overruling a woman’s right to an abortion. He said in an interview with Fox News that the decision "will work out for everybody."

"This is following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago," Trump said, according to the channel. "I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody."

Asked if he felt he played a role in this outcome, having appointed three conservative justices to the court while in office, Trump said "God made the decision."

But a short time later, the 45th president chimed in again to take credit for the ruling.

"Today's decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation...(was) only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court," he said in a statement.

"It was my great honor to do so!"

Trump's four years in office saw the appointment of three justices that tilted the balance of the Supreme Court to its current conservative majority.

Those appointees were Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom signed on to Friday's majority decision.

Trump, whose statement carried the familiar scattering of capital letters, castigated Democrats, the media and "RINOs" -- a disparaging term for Republicans deemed not sufficiently right-wing -- as the "enemy of the people."

"Even though the Radical Left is doing everything in their power to destroy our Country, your Rights are being protected, the Country is being defended, and there is still hope and time to Save America!

"I will never stop fighting for the Great People of our Nation!"

Trump, whose actions and inactions around the January 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol are under the spotlight at Congressional hearings, is publicly mulling another run at the White House.

He was defeated in 2020 in his bid for re-election by Biden, but has refused to accept the result.

Seventeen months after leaving office, Trump delivered on a campaign promise when the conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority he cemented overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The ruling represented a victory long in the making for a well-organized and generously funded conservative movement to push America's courts rightward, aided by legal activists and deft political maneuvering by top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell.

Trump during his four years as president appointed three justices - Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 - to give a court that had been ideologically deadlocked with four liberals and four conservatives when he took office a solid 6-3 conservative majority by the time he left. All three appointees were in the majority in the decision to overturn Roe.

The month before Trump's election in November 2016, the Republican businessman-turned-politician promised during a debate with his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to appoint justices who would overturn the Roe decision.

"Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that ... will happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court," Trump said at the time.

Trump's pitch appealed to conservative Christian voters, who became a key constituency during his presidency.

Having lost in 2020, Trump continues to flirt publicly with the idea of running again for president in 2024.

Biden acknowledged Trump's critical role in overturning Roe. "Three justices named by one president, Donald Trump, were the core of today's decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country," Biden said.

Restricting abortion access does not stop people seeking the procedure "it only makes it more deadly," a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said on Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a 1973 decision legalizing abortion.

"Sexual and reproductive health and rights are the foundation of a life of choice, empowerment and equality for the world's women and girls," spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

"Restricting access to abortion does not prevent people from seeking abortion, it only makes it more deadly," she added.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N. sexual and reproductive health agency, said "a staggering 45% of all abortions around the world are unsafe, making this a leading cause of maternal death."

The U.S. court's decision was "a major setback" and a "huge blow to women’s human rights and gender equality," U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.

Nearly half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended and more than 60% of those may end in abortion, the UNFPA said.

It said that the United States – along with 178 other countries – backed a 1994 program that "recognized how deadly unsafe abortions are and urged all countries to provide post-abortion care to save lives, irrespective of the legal status of abortion."

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Friday's ruling powered by its conservative majority, ended constitutional protections for abortion contained in the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling of 1973. Roughly half of the U.S. states are poised to ban abortions. Trump cemented the conservative majority in the Supreme Court by appointing three justices during his four-year term.

Trump's administration also led a push at the U.N. against the promotion of women's sexual and reproductive rights and health because it sees that as code for abortion. It opposed the long-agreed international language in U.N. resolutions.

Trump cut funding for UNFPA because it "supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization." The U.N. said that was an inaccurate perception. Trump's successor Biden has restored the funding.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, called the ruling "outrageous and heart-wrenching," while leading abortion provider Planned Parenthood vowed to "never stop fighting."

Former President Barack Obama charged that the ruling "relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues – attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans."

But Trump's former vice president Mike Pence said the court had "righted a historic wrong," consigning the U.S. right to abortion to the "ash heap of history."

The case before the court was a Mississippi law that would restrict abortion to 15 weeks but while hearing the case in December several justices indicated they were prepared to go further.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 13 states have adopted so-called "trigger laws" that will ban abortion virtually immediately.

Ten others have pre-1973 laws that could go into force or legislation that would ban abortion after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant.

Women in states with strict anti-abortion laws will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion, obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where the procedure remains legal.

Several Democratic-ruled states, anticipating an influx, have taken steps to facilitate abortion and three of them – California, Oregon and Washington – issued a joint pledge to defend access in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision.